American aviation pioneer Wally Funk
© Blue Origin

After training for 60 years, Wally Funk finally arrived in space this summer. Once a trainee of the First Lady Astronaut Trainees (FLAT’s) program run by a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) physician back in 1961, Funk passed all the tests and training before the program ended. Although these women, later known as the Mercury 13, were not permitted to become astronauts, Funk never forgot her dream of going to space. She had a distinguished career as a pilot, logging thousands of miles or kilometers in the air and teaching thousands of other pilots, not staying on the ground for too long.

On July 20, 2021, Funk flew on the New Shepard rocket built by the company Blue Origin, founded by American businessman Jeff Bezos. She rode with Jeff Bezos, Bezos’s brother Mark, and 18-year-old physics student Oliver Daemen. The rocket rose more than 100 miles (61 kilometers) straight into the air to the boundary of space. The booster separated from the capsule and landed using its engines. The capsule floated back down to the ground on parachutes. The whole flight lasted about 10 minutes.

The American businessman Jeff Bezos poses with the other passengers on the first crewed flight into space of Blue Origin’s craft New Shepard: (left to right) Mark Bezos, American executive; Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin; Oliver Daemen, Dutch student; and Wally Funk, American aviation pioneer.
© Blue Origin

At age 82, Funk was at that time the oldest person to travel to space. She surpassed the American astronaut and senator John Glenn, who returned to space in 1998 at the age of 77 aboard the space shuttle. Wally Funk held the record for 85 days. Since then, Candian-born actor William Shatner, 90, traveled to space on Blue Origin’s second suborbital flight on October 13, 2021, claiming the record.

Mary Wallace Funk was born Feb. 1, 1939, in Las Vegas, New Mexico, near Santa Fe. She began her first flying lessons at the age of nine. Funk graduated first in her flying class at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, and earned her pilot’s license in 1958. Funk earned her Bachelor of Science degree in secondary education from Oklahoma State University. There, she joined the school aviation team, the Flying Aggies. In 1960, at the age of 21, she was named a flight instructor at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, becoming the first woman flight instructor at a U.S. military base.

After the FLAT’s program ended, Funk continued her career as a pilot and flight instructor. She became the first woman inspector with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 1971. In 1974, she became the first woman air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, investigating plane crashes. NASA began accepting women as astronauts in 1978, and Funk applied four times to the agency for astronaut training. She was denied, despite her experience, because she did not have an engineering degree. Undeterred, Funk pursued opportunities for private space travel, purchasing a ticket for a future suborbital flight with space tourism company Virgin Galactic. Earlier this year, Bezos surprised Funk with a seat on Blue Origin’s inaugural crewed flight, fulfilling Funk’s lifelong dream.

The Lucy spacecraft flies past the Trojan asteroid 617 Patroclus and Menoetius in this artist’s rendering.
Credit: NASA Goddard

It’s not every day that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)  launches a new spacecraft. Their latest, named Lucy, was launched Oct. 16, 2021, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Its mission? Explore the Trojan asteroid belt near the orbit of Jupiter. Lucy doesn’t have a crew, but the craft is equipped with powerful telescopes and cameras to gather information about the mysterious asteroids.

Lucy won’t be taking a direct path to Jupiter’s orbit, however. The spacecraft will use a series of gravity assists to help move it closer to its target. In a gravity assist, a spacecraft uses momentum gained from swinging by a planet to adjust its path and fling it toward a target.

After spending a year orbiting the sun, Lucy will return to Earth’s orbit for its first gravity assist in October 2022. This assist will set it on a course it toward Mars. In 2024, a second gravity assist will send Lucy towards the main asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. On this orbit, Lucy’s telescopes and cameras will capture images of asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson. The probe should arrive at the Trojan asteroid belt by 2027.

Each of the asteroids in the Trojan belt is named after a different hero from the Greek epic the Iliad. The first Trojan Lucy will photograph is Eurybates in August 2027. Eurybates is unique because it has a smaller moon orbiting it, named Queta. Polymele will be photographed in September 2027, and Leucus and Orus will be photographed in April 2028 and November 2028, respectively. After that, Lucy will return to Earth for one more gravity assist. In 2033, Lucy will finish the mission by visiting the Trojan asteroids Patroclus and Menoetius. The spacecraft will remain in orbit around the asteroids, studying the asteroids for as long as it continues to function.

The Trojan asteroids were named after Greek myths, but what about Lucy? Usually, NASA uses acronyms for naming spacecraft. An acronym is a word that uses the first letter of each word in a phrase to create a new word, for example referring to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as NASA.  In Lucy’s case, however, they named the craft after a fossilized skeleton found in 1974, in Ethiopia. Lucy wasn’t exactly a human – she represented a species of hominin called Australopithecus Afarensis. Hominins are a group of living things that includes human beings and early humanlike ancestors.

The expedition that found the skeleton Lucy was led by the anthropologist Donald Johanson and his student Tom Gray. An anthropologist is a scientist who studies humans and their close relatives. They were looking for fossils, and on Nov. 24, 1974, they found one of the most significant fossils to date. With 40 percent of her recovered, Lucy represents one of the most complete skeletons ever found from her time, dating to about 3.18 million years ago. When the team returned to their camp the night they found the first fossils, they celebrated their finding by listening to music and partying. One of the songs on repeat that night was “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” a song by British rock band The Beatles. Pamela Alderman, a member of the team, gave the fossil hominid they found the nickname “Lucy” after the song. Just as Donald Johanson was the first to discover the fossil Lucy, the spacecraft Lucy will be the first to study asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson, named in the anthropologist’s honor.

An image captured by the GOES-16 satellite shows a flash (purple) most likely caused by a bolide (exploding meteor) over New Hampshire on Oct. 10, 2021.
Credit: NOAA

A mysterious boom rattled houses, shook the ground, and frightened pets in southern New Hampshire around 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, October 10. Curious people in the Granite State took to the internet to find the cause. Was it an earthquake, an aircraft, a single thunderclap, a spaceship, or a meteor? There was nothing in the news about it, so one observer called the fire department, which also did not have any answers. Around 400 residents shared their observations on volcanodiscovery.com, an online forum where people report seismic activity (vibrations from earthquakes). What caused the boom?

While earthquakes do occur in the area of New Hampshire, the United States Geological Survey announced that there were no earthquakes in all New England on Sunday. The Geological Survey is a federal agency tasked in part with monitoring such hazards as earthquakes and volcanoes.

Ruling out an earthquake, many people kept researching. One cause of confusion was that even though there was an audible (able to be heard) boom and physical thud, there was no damage reported. Was it a powerful military plane? The Federal Aviation Administration announced there was no unusual military flight activity over the state. One concerned resident theorized that the sound came from the recently established New Boston Space Force Station, previously an air force base.

Meteorologists said the mystery blast was most likely a sonic boom caused by a meteor. A meteor appears when a piece of matter enters Earth’s atmosphere from space at high speed, causing it to heat up. A fireball is a meteor that burns brightly as it plunges through the atmosphere. If the fireball explodes at the end of its path, it is called a bolide.

Greg Cornwell, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service, said that a suspicious spot appeared in images from the weather satellite GOES-16, which in part maps lightning strikes, around the same time people reported the boom. Weather satellite images generally pick up storms and other weather patterns. Although it was overcast that morning, there were no thunderstorms to explain the blip. Bolides and fireballs have in the past appeared as false storms in satellite images. Cornwell also explained that this time of year is known for meteor showers.

Many experts considered it likely that a meteor explosion produced the mysterious boom. However, to officially pin the blast on a meteor, scientists need a direct eyewitness account or video evidence. No solid eyewitness account or video evidence has been brought forward, so residents may have to settle for a hunch.

Liftoff of Inspiration4 on September 15, 2021.
Credit: John Kraus, Inspiration4

On Wednesday evening, four people blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, for a multi-day orbital flight. But none of them were trained astronauts. Nor were they members of any branch of the armed services. They were part of the first all-civilian orbital spaceflight in history.

American entrepreneur Jared Isaacman financed the mission. Determined to prevent the flight from being viewed as a billionaire’s thrill-seeking jaunt into space, Isaacman turned the event into a fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, with the goal of raising $200 million. He solicited donations and held contests to determine who would join him on the flight. The three winners were physician’s assistant and former St. Jude’s patient Hayley Arceneaux, data engineer Chris Sembroski, and geoscientist Sian Proctor. Now, the quartet is orbiting Earth, performing experiments and conducting outreach activities. Their capsule will likely splash down in the Atlantic Ocean over the weekend.

The crew of Inspiration4 participate in a launch day rehearsal on September 13, 2021 : (L-R) Sembroski, Proctor, Isaacman and Arceneaux.
Credit: SpaceX

After two decades of mishaps and false starts, the space tourism industry finally appears poised to take off. Isaacman’s flight is the third major space tourism milestone to occur this year. In July, entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson competed to reach space first aboard rockets from their respective space companies, with Branson edging out Bezos by less than 10 days.

But Isaacman purchased his flight neither from Bezos’s company, Blue Origin, nor Branson’s company, Virgin Galactic. The Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 rocket that took Inspiration 4 to orbit were manufactured by the American aerospace company SpaceX. Neither Bezos’s nor Branson’s craft were designed to fly as high or as long as SpaceX’s capsule. Isaacman and his fellow travelers will reach an altitude of 357 miles (575 kilometers) above Earth, higher than the orbits of both the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope.

The founder of SpaceX, South African-born entrepreneur Elon Musk, declined to directly participate in the billionaire’s space race. Instead, his company has focused on flying Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon missions for paying customers. SpaceX also spent the year expanding its satellite internet constellation called Starlink and developing its next rocket, the colossal Starship.

Reuse has been the key to the space tourism boom. Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic plan to operate their spacecraft many times to achieve profitability. The Falcon 9 booster that launched Isaacman and his crew into orbit landed on a specialized drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. It was the booster’s third flight; and SpaceX will now inspect it and prepare it to fly again. The Crew Dragon capsule that is hosting the Inspiration 4 mission, Resilience, previously brought a crew of astronauts to the ISS in the Crew-1 mission. Resilience is scheduled to host another space tourism mission next year.

British businessman Richard Branson poses in front of the spaceplane VSS Unity with the other missions specialists of Virgin Galactic’s Unity-22 mission. The glass-paneled terminal of Spaceport America is visible in the background. From left to right: Beth Moses, Chief Astronaut Instructor; Branson; Sirisha Bandla, Vice President of Government Affairs and Research Operations; Colin Bennett, Lead Operations Engineer.
Credit: © Virgin Galactic

After years of delay, the age of space tourism may finally be upon us. On Sunday morning, the British businessman Richard Branson flew aboard his company Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane in a suborbital flight. Soon, paying customers will get their turn to go to space.

Branson rode with five other members of his company on VSS Unity.VSS Unity is a SpaceShipTwo model spaceplane. A special aircraft called a WhiteKnightTwo takes off from a runway carrying a SpaceShipTwo. A WhiteKnightTwo named VMS Eve took off from Spaceport America in New Mexico and carried VSS Unity up above 45,0000 feet (14,000 meters). After Eve released Unity, pilots ignited a rocket engine and the craft soared up to 300,000 feet (90,000 meters). After a few minutes of weightless freefall, Unity glided back down to Earth. The whole flight lasted about 90 minutes.

Branson and the other mission specialists float around the cabin of VSS Unity during the spaceplane’s July 10 flight.
Credit: © Virgin Galactic

Branson has always relished spectacle, and Sunday’s flight was no different. Virgin Galactic’s live stream of the event was hosted by the American comedian Stephen Colbert. The landing featured the debut performance of “New Normal”, a new song by American singer Khalid. South-African-born entrepreneur and fellow space baron Elon Musk (founder of SpaceX) was among the well-wishers at Spaceport America.

Branson’s flight is a hopeful milestone on Virgin Galactic’s long, fraught road toward commercial operations. Branson founded the company in 2004. He licensed the technology of the American aerospace company Scaled Composites, which won the Ansari X Prize that year for developing a rapidly reusable launch vehicle. Virgin Galactic unveiled SpaceShipTwo in 2006. But the next year, an explosion during a ground test killed three Scaled Composites employees and injured three others. In 2014, a SpaceShipTwo named VSS Enterprise broke apart during a test flight. The pilot was killed and the copilot seriously injured. Despite these setbacks, Virgin Galactic forged ahead. Unity was completed in 2016 and underwent several test flights prior to its mission Sunday.

Space tourism existed long before Unity’s flight on Sunday. In 2001, the American investment consultant Dennis Tito became the first space tourist, visiting the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Russian Soyuz craft. Over the next several years, a handful of space tourists made similar trips. But they all paid tens of millions of dollars to buy extra seats aboard government-funded spacecraft.

Until about a week ago, it appeared that American businessman Jeff Bezos, not Branson, was going to be the first mogul to fly to space aboard his own spacecraft. Bezos, who made billions from his online shopping company Amazon, founded an aerospace company called Blue Origin in 2000. Bezos is scheduled to launch aboard his company’s reusable New Glenn rocket on July 20. Although Branson denied the existence of a race between the two, he added himself to Sunday’s flight, which was originally scheduled as a test flight, after Blue Origin’s announcement.

Virgin Galactic plans to hold two more test flights before starting paying trips, probably sometime in 2022. Then, it will begin scheduling rides for the 600 people who purchased tickets.

Space tourism will still be for the very wealthy. Virgin Galactic was selling tickets for $250,000 apiece before it paused ticket sales after the 2014 accident. Blue Origin has not yet begun selling tickets, but they are expected to be within the same range. So, if you’d like to go to space, save your pennies!

This rock, called “Máaz” (the Navajo word for “Mars”), is the first feature of scientific interest to be studied by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

When you’re exploring a planet, you have to name things. It’s a great way to memorialize your discoveries, but it also prevents confusion: are you going to study This Rock, That Rock, or The Other Rock?

The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) mission Mars 2020 is hard at work exploring Mars. The mission’s rover, Perseverance, landed on Feb. 18, 2021, in Jezero Crater. The mission planners have been naming important surface features in the Navajo language. This decision wasn’t planned before the rover landed, but came about by happy circumstance.

Landing on another solar system body is tough. Mission planners can guide a lander to a general destination, but they cannot pinpoint an exact landing site. Mars 2020 mission planners could guide Perseverance to Jezero Crater, but they could not know where in the 28-mile (45-kilometer) wide crater the rover was going to land. Therefore, mission planners studied the entire crater to prepare for landing. They divided the crater into several sections, naming each after a place on Earth—including U.S. national monuments—that the section resembled in some way.

Perseverance landed within the section that planners had named after Canyon de Chelly National Monument. This national monument, known for its huge, colorful, steep-walled canyons, lies entirely within the Navajo reservation. The Navajo are one of the largest Native American groups in the United States. The Navajo reservation, which covers 16 million acres (6.5 million hectares), is the nation’s biggest reservation. It includes parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.

Canyon de Chelly National Monument (“Tséyi’” in Navajo) in Arizona is located on Navajo Nation land. Members of NASA’s Perseverance rover team, in collaboration with the Navajo Nation, has been naming features of scientific interest with words in the Navajo language.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Mars mission scientists informally name important features to make them easier to identify. Mars 2020 mission scientists were inspired by the name of their landing site to nickname features in the Navajo language. They teamed up with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientist Aaron Yazzie, who is Navajo, to seek permission from the Navajo Nation. The nation’s government approved the idea and developed a list of potential names. The first name to be used was Máaz, the Navajo word for Mars, for a rock near the landing site. Navajo officials also included the translation for Perseverance: Ha’ahóni.

Perseverance has to be “taught” the language, since the computer languages the rover uses cannot process the special characters and diacritical marks used in the written Navajo language. Mars 2020 team members are working to develop better transliterations using the English alphabet.

This is not the first time the Navajo language has played an outsized role in United States history. During the United States’ involvement in World War II (1939-1945), Navajo radio operators sent secret messages using a code based on the Navajo language. At the time, Navajo was an unwritten language known to few people outside of the Navajo Nation. Its complex structure, difficult pronunciation, and singsong qualities made it nearly impossible to decipher. Although Imperial Japanese forces could overhear the messages, they never managed to decode them. The Navajo radio operators, called code talkers, have been honored for their service in the war.

Mars 2020 has shed its proverbial training wheels and is breaking new ground in the exploration of the Red Planet. The helicopter Ingenuity, another part of the mission, conducted its first flight on April 19. Engineers are now pushing Ingenuity further, conducting longer, more challenging flights. The craft’s performance will gather valuable information for future Mars flyers. Perseverance’s robotic arm began conducting science on May 11. As the mission continues to explore, planners will continue to nickname features in the Navajo language—a tribute to the Navajo people, their culture, and the land they call home.

Indian-born American astronaut Kalpana Chawla
Credit: NASA

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. All month long, Behind the Headlines will feature AAPI pioneers in a variety of areas.

In 1997, the American astronaut Kalpana Chawla (1962-2003) became the first Indian-born woman to travel into space. Chawla served on two missions aboard the United States space shuttle Columbia as a mission specialist and robotic arm operator.

Chawla was born on March 17, 1962, in Karnal, northern India. Karnal was part of the state of Punjab at that time. Today, it is part of the state of Haryana. She graduated from the Punjab Engineering College in 1982. That same year, she immigrated to the United States. In 1984, she earned a master’s degree from the University of Texas in Austin. She married Jean-Pierre Harrison, an aviation teacher and author, in 1983. She received her doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1988. She then went to work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In 1994, she was selected for training as an astronaut candidate.

In 1997, Chawla flew her first mission on the shuttle Columbia. She was the second person of Indian descent to travel in space, following the Indian-born cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma, who traveled on a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in 1984. Chawla’s duties involved conducting experiments in microgravity, sometimes called zero gravity or weightlessness, and launching a satellite using the shuttle’s robotic arm. Her second mission was on the same shuttle in 2003. However, on Feb. 1, 2003, as the Columbia was returning to Earth after the 16-day mission, the spacecraft broke apart high over Texas. Chawla and six other crew members were killed.

Chawla received many honors for her work in space. They include the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, the NASA Space Flight Medal, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. In addition, an asteroid that orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter is named the 51826 Kalpanachawla in her honor.

Credit: WORLD BOOK photo

April 23 is World Book Day, a celebration of the special role that books play in our lives. To celebrate, we at World Book (get it?) invited author William D. Adams to talk about his experience creating a special set of books, Out of This World 2.

I’m Will Adams, a content creator at World Book. I’ve had the privilege of working on many books during my career at World Book, most recently by writing the second series of Out of This World.

When I was a kid, I loved going to the local library and browsing the science and science fiction sections. But as I got older, I got frustrated by the technological leaps required in science fiction. Why couldn’t we live in space and travel among the stars already?

Out of This World is World Book’s collaboration with a branch of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) called the NASA Innovative and Advanced Concepts program (NIAC). NASA is world-famous, but you may never have heard of NIAC before. NIAC is working to bring some of that technology from science fiction into existence.

NIAC is a bit like a startup incubator for space exploration projects. Scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, or anyone else from across the United States may submit a proposal to NIAC about an idea that could revolutionize the way we reach, explore, or live in space. The idea has to be revolutionary and largely unstudied: no small plans are allowed. A committee reviews the proposals and awards small grants to the most deserving projects.

The NIAC inventors use the money to test their ideas and to work out details of their designs. The hope is that the best ideas become part of NASA missions or get picked up by the private space industry.

One of the most prominent ideas to “graduate” NIAC is the starshade. A starshade is a spacecraft with a giant, unfolding shade, a bit like a giant umbrella. The shade can block out a distant star’s light, enabling a space telescope to directly image any exoplanets (distant planets) orbiting around it. It’s the same principle as using your hand to block the sun’s light when trying to see something in the bright sky. Engineers hope to launch a starshade in the next 5 to 10 years.

I had so much fun interviewing the scientists and engineers for this series. They’re all incredibly smart people, of course, but also down to earth and from a wide variety of backgrounds. And—no surprise here—many of them were inspired by books growing up, both fiction and nonfiction.

Out of This World reads like a blueprint for the future. It shows how we can study other planets, how we can get to those planets faster, how we can live in space or on other planets, and even what to wear when we get there!

Amazingly, Out of This World 1 & 2 only scratch the surface of the innovative concepts that NIAC has funded. And, NIAC’s blueprint for the future grows every year. Just a couple of weeks ago, on April 8, they released their 2021 Phase II and III grants. These awards are for projects that are proven to work but need more research and development before they can be incorporated into mission designs.

One 2021 Phase II grant is to further study plans for a huge radio telescope. Remember the Arecibo telescope that collapsed last year? Think of this as an extra-large replacement—but located on the far side of the moon! NASA engineer Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay proposes sending a robotic probe to construct a giant radio dish in a lunar crater. Shielded from the noisy radio-wave emissions of human technology on Earth, such a telescope could study the early history of the universe. I can’t wait to write about it in series 3!

I hope you celebrate World Book Day by picking up a book and getting inspired, just as many of the NIAC inventors did. Maybe you’ll be inspired to think about things a different way, to write your own story, or even to explore the stars.

NASA’s Mars 2020 rover Perseverance
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mars is one of the most difficult destinations to arrive safely at in the solar system, but you might not know it if you have been paying attention to the news lately. Earthlings are a perfect three-for-three on Mars missions this February. Two countries saw their first missions ever arrive at the Red Planet last week. Then yesterday, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) landed the Mars 2020 rover Perseverance on the surface of Mars. This flotilla of missions to the Red Planet was facilitated by a favorable alignment in the middle of 2020 that brought the planet close to Earth.

On February 9, a spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) arrived in orbit around Mars. The orbiter, called Hope or Amal, will map Martian weather on a planet-wide scale. Such mapping has never been attempted before. UAE became just the fifth country to reach the planet. All systems look good at the moment, but Hope is due to enter the orbit from which it will conduct its mapping in May. At that point, engineers will know for sure if the probe will be able to accomplish its mission.

Hot on Hope’s heels was an ambitious mission sent by the China National Space Administration (CNSA). The mission, called Tianwen-1, went into orbit around Mars the next day. The mission consists of an orbiter, a lander, and a rover. The lander and rover will attempt a landing in a few months. If CNSA successfully deploys Tianwen-1, China will become the third country to land a spacecraft on Mars and just the second to land a rover on Mars.

The last—but certainly not least—to arrive was Perseverance. The rocket carrying the beefy rover blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on July, 30, 2020. Perseverance is the largest rover ever sent to Mars. It’s the size of a small automobile and weighs over 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) on Earth.

Unlike China and the UAE, the United States is a Mars veteran. NASA has landed several successful missions there, including the still-operational sibling craft of Perseverance, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity.

The design of Perseverance is based on that of Curiosity, which has been exploring Mars since 2012. Engineers used many extra components that were originally created as backups for Curiosity in case of manufacturing defects in the originals. But Perseverance is more than just a pile of spare parts. Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientists and engineers modified—and beefed up—the design to fit Perseverance’s mission. Perseverance is about 5 inches (13 centimeters) longer and 278 pounds (126 kilograms) heavier than Curiosity.

No matter how many successful missions are under a space agency’s belt, getting a spacecraft to Mars is a heart-pounding ordeal. Landing on the Red Planet is especially challenging. Mars is a large planet, so its gravity pulls spacecraft towards it at high speed. It lacks a thick atmosphere like that of Earth, however, that spacecraft could use to slow down. Furthermore, retrorockets placed on the rover would scour the ground near the landing site and contaminate it with rocket exhaust.

JPL has developed a complex of system to land a large rover on the Martian surface, which was first used with MSL. A parachute slowed the craft after it entered the Martian atmosphere. A set of rockets then fired to hover the craft above the surface. Then, Perseverance was lowered to the ground on a tether. Mission planners call this complicated ride through the atmosphere, filled with opportunities for mission-ending disaster, “the seven minutes of terror.”

Perseverance touched down in Jezero Crater. Billions of years ago, the crater held a lake that was fed by a river system. Perseverance will explore this ancient river delta and search for signs of past life there.

Perseverance carries many sophisticated scientific instruments that will enable it study the geology and climate of the region. The rover is equipped with a special drill and sample vials. After studying the rock samples it has drilled, it will place them in sealed vials and cache (stow) them on the surface. Scientists hope to recover the cached vials and send them to Earth in an ambitious sample return mission in a decade or so.

Other special features included an upgraded autonomous driving package, which will enable Perseverance to pick its way through obstacles on its own to reach a target, and a small helicopter drone called Ingenuity that will look to demonstrate the first powered flight on a solar system body other than Earth. Expect to hear about more exciting discoveries—and see more stunning pictures of Mars—in the months and years ahead.

The dish of Arecibo Observatory’s radio telescope lies heavily damaged following the collapse of the instrument platform on Dec. 1, 2020.
Credit: © estadespr, Shutterstock

The year 2020 claimed yet another victim, with the destruction of one of the most impressive telescopes ever built—the radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory. Already damaged beyond repair, the remaining cables that held the telescope’s instrument platform snapped on December 1, sending the platform crashing through the dish below. It was a spectacular and disappointing end to a telescope that has done so much to further our understanding of the universe.

The radio telescope was the primary instrument at the observatory, located in Puerto Rico, 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of San Juan. A radio telescope collects and measures radio waves given off by objects in space. At 1,000 feet (305 meters) in diameter, the Arecibo radio telescope was the world’s most powerful when it opened in 1963. It remained the largest dish (bowl-shaped reflector) in the world until 2016, when the dish of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) was completed in Guizhou Province, China.

The Arecibo dish was built into a natural basin-shaped valley. The dish focused radio waves onto receivers mounted on the large instrument platform suspended above. The waves came from such distant objects as pulsars (rapidly spinning stars whose waves arrive on Earth as regular pulses). Arecibo astronomers discovered the first binary pulsar (a pulsar in orbit around a companion star) in 1974. In the early 1990′s, astronomers at the observatory discovered planets beyond the solar system and ice at the poles of Mercury. Until the middle of 2020, astronomers were using the radio telescope for a variety of astronomical observations, including monitoring and assessing the threat level of near-Earth asteroids.

The Arecibo Observatory radio telescope as it appeared before its collapse in 2020. The instrument platform (top center) crashed through the dish on December 1.
Credit: © Than Tibbetts, Shutterstock

The impressive appearance of the massive dish surrounded by the lush, forested hills of Puerto Rico’s interior seemed particularly to capture the public imagination. The radio telescope appeared in the sci-fi motion picture Contact (1997) and the James Bond film GoldenEye (1995), for example.

The final collapse of the telescope began in August 2020, when an auxiliary cable that held the instrument platform broke. The falling cable tore several large gashes in the dish. In November, before engineers had a chance to repair the dish or replace the cable, a main support cable broke. The United States National Science Foundation (NSF) quickly determined that the telescope could no longer be saved without putting lives at risk. The NSF was considering plans to decommission the telescope—taking it permanently out of service—when the collapse occurred.

The future of the Arecibo Observatory appears doubtful. The U.S. Congress could direct funds to replace the telescope, but it may be more likely that the facility will be closed permanently.

In 1975, scientists engaged in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence used the dish from the Arecibo telescope to beam a powerful signal into space. This signal was designed by astronomer Frank Drake with the help of famous science popularizer Carl Sagan to give any intelligent being who discovers it information about Earth and humans. Encoded within the message was an image of the dish itself. Although it is unlikely that any alien civilizations will receive the message, it serves a lasting monument to the telescope’s legacy.