…week of Feb 22, 2021
Welcome to my weekly letter! This week we are talking about an obligatory topic — Daft Punk’s breakup! Sorry, kidding, although that’s huge too for a lot of people. The latest expedition on Mars! Without further ado…
Weekly Read
- Tensions rise as rival Mars probes approach their final destination (The Guardian) – it’s the space race of this era!
- How NASA’s Perseverance rover will send Martian rocks back to Earth for the first time ever (CBS News) –
TL;DR: In 2026 or 2028 NASA and ESA plan to launch ‘Sample Retrieval Lander‘, which has a rover to collect the ‘payload’ prepared by Perseverance, and a rocket to launch and then leave the ‘payload’ in Mars orbit. It is to be collected by yet another planned spacecraft ‘Earth Return Orbiter‘ which will collect the orbiting ‘payload’ and bring it home in 2031. If all goes well 😉 - The Mastcam-Z Filter Set: How Perseverance Will See the Colors of Mars (mastcamz.asu.edu) – a detailed article by the team who designed Perseverance’s 25 eyes (4 of which dropped with landing hardware, 2 are on the Ingenuity helicopter, so… 19 left on the rover)! Even though it can see very well already, with the typical CCD sensor, RGB filter, and a custom built 8-filters wheel (capturing wavelength from 442 to 1022nm), the scientists and engineers are excited for the future opportunities to see mars in even wider spectrums and sharper clarity.
- Why some scientists believe life may have started on Mars (Salon.com) – advanced genomics, with potential evidence to be returned to Earth in a decade, may prove the Panspermia theory. The human traveling to mars could be… homecoming!
- NASA Wants to Set a New Radiation Limit for Astronauts (Wired) – The way each country sets different, seemingly arbitrary, radiation thresholds reflect the need to better study/re-assess the actual impact to the human body. It seems that it is very early days for our plan of space travel
- If Planet Nine exists, why has no one seen it? (bbc.com) – it’s a rabbit hole! it’s a shadow! it’s… the outer rim! There is still so much out there we do not know about, and we could start by identifying all the planets within our solar system.
Thoughts
It has been an exciting month for space exploration. Three Mars missions, UAE’s Hope, China’s Tianwen-1, US Perseverance, all arrived successfully on Feb 9th, 10th, and 18th. All three were launched in July 2020, and travelled almost seven months to Mars. Perseverance, being the only rover of the three, received the most attention with all the images, videos, and for the first time, audio captured from Mars. Heck, it even has a helicopter in its sleeve!
While each of the countries showing off their technical prowess, while also giving people hope for the future of human’s space exploration, I found myself going back to review/ re-study again, reminding myself where we are in space, and setting a proper, humble perspective in this exciting time.
Mars, the 4th rock from the Sun, is the very next planet next to Earth, sizing a bit over half of Earth, with >95% of its atmosphere covered in carbon dioxide (CO2). Being the red, desert, planet named after the Roman ‘god of war’, its two moons were properly named Phobos (panic/fear) and Deimos (terror/dread)!
Since 1965 there have been various missions to explore the red planet, and 7 landed on Mars, 6 of them are rovers, and one was a lander (Viking 1). China’s Tianwen-1 is also expected to land its rover component in May 2021.
While we are hopeful these missions will provide further evidence about Mars’ potential water source, life’s existence or origin, or maybe just a validation that we may be able to terraform and colonize the whole planet to call it our new home, it is also frightening to recognize that there are still so much we don’t yet know.
When I was still in school we were taught that there were nine planets in the solar system. In 2005, Pluto, the last of the 9th planets discovered in 1930, was downgraded to be a dwarf planet. There is still a strong belief that there’s a planet X (which confusingly, would be the 9th, not the tenth, planet in the solar system), and there may very much be another planet, or any stars with habitable potential.
One wish the rapid technical advancement will help us find ways to move faster (not talking about hyperdrive yet, but hopefully it doesn’t take 6 months to go to our next door neighbor), see clearer and farther (with even better camera tech), reduce or eliminate the radiation impact to human body (some type of deflector shield?), and terraform/colonize planets (perhaps we can use those carbon capture tech there?)
And then we shall rule the galaxy… or at least allow humanity to live on, on a red planet in addition to our beautiful blue marble.
Stay Tuned…
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