News
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Reaches the Top Rim of the Jezero Crater

In 2018, NASA mission planners selected the Jezero Crater as the longer term touchdown website of the Perseverance rover. This crater was a pure selection, because it was as soon as an historic lake mattress, as evidenced by the delta fan at its western edge. On Earth, these options kind within the presence of flowing water that steadily deposits sediment over time. Mixed with the truth that the Jezero Crater’s delta function is wealthy in clays, this makes the area a chief goal to seek for biosignatures – proof of previous (and perhaps current) life on Mars!
In latest information, NASA introduced that the Perseverance rover had reached the top of Jezero Crater’s rim at a location the science workforce calls “Lookout Hill.” The rover spent the earlier three and a half months climbing the rim, masking a distance of 500 vertical meters (1,640 vertical ft) and making science observations alongside the way in which. Now that it has crested the rim, Perseverance can start what the mission workforce calls its “Northern Rim” marketing campaign. Over the following 12 months, the rover is predicted to drive 6.4 km (4 mi) and go to as much as 4 websites of curiosity the place it’ll receive geological samples.
Because it landed within the Jezero Crater in February 2021, Perseverance has accomplished four science campaigns. This contains the “Crater Floor,” “Fan Front,” “Upper Fan,” and “Margin Unit” based mostly on the place the rover was acquiring samples from. In the course of the first marketing campaign, the rover visited options round its touchdown website – just like the Máaz formation – the place it obtained a number of rock and atmospheric samples, and a few witness samples for contamination evaluation. The 2 campaigns that adopted noticed the rover discover completely different sections of Jezero’s delta fan and procure samples of rock and clay.
The fourth marketing campaign, in the meantime, consisted of the rover inspecting marginal carbonate rocks that circle the higher fringe of the Jezero Crater. The science workforce calls Perseverance’s fifth marketing campaign the “Northern Rim” as a result of its route covers the northern a part of the southwestern part of Jezero’s rim. The positioning was chosen in order that the rover may discover a area of Mars, not like something it has investigated earlier than. Ken Farley, a challenge scientist for Perseverance at Caltech, defined in a NASA press release:
“The Northern Rim marketing campaign brings us fully new scientific riches as Perseverance roves into basically new geology. It marks our transition from rocks that partially crammed Jezero Crater when it was fashioned by a large influence about 3.9 billion years in the past to rocks from deep down inside Mars that have been thrown upward to kind the crater rim after influence. These rocks characterize items of early Martian crust and are among the many oldest rocks discovered wherever within the photo voltaic system. Investigating them may assist us perceive what Mars — and our personal planet — might have appeared like to start with.”
Now that Perseverance has crested and moved on from Lookout Hill, the rover is heading to a rocky outcrop about 450 m (1,500 ft) on the opposite facet of the rim referred to as “Witch Hazel Hill.” Stated Candice Bedford, a Perseverance scientist from Purdue College:
“The marketing campaign begins off with a bang as a result of Witch Hazel Hill represents over 330 ft [~100 m] of layered outcrop, the place every layer is sort of a web page within the ebook of Martian historical past. As we drive down the hill, we shall be going again in time, investigating the traditional environments of Mars recorded within the crater rim. Then, after a steep descent, we take our first turns of the wheel away from the crater rim towards ‘Lac de Charmes,’ about 2 miles [3.2 km] south.”
Positioned on the plains past the rim, the Lac de Charmes area is of curiosity to the mission workforce as a result of it’s much less more likely to have been affected by the influence that led to the Jezero Crater. Past that, the rover will journey about 1.6 km (1 mi) again up the rim to analyze an outcropping of blocks (megabreccia) which may be the stays of historic bedrock damaged by one other influence. This was the Isidis impact, which occurred 3.9 billion years in the past and led to the formation of the Isidis Planitia basin within the Northern Lowlands.

Investigating this website may present beneficial perception into a serious surface-reshaping occasion that came about throughout the Noachian Period on Mars. This geological epoch noticed intensive erosion by flowing water, as indicated by the numerous river valley networks dated to the interval. It’s also throughout the Noachian that the Tharsis Bulge is believed to have fashioned, indicating that Mars was nonetheless geologically energetic. As all the time, the last word aim is to seek out biosignatures from this “hotter, wetter” interval that point out that Mars may have had life (much like Earth on the time).
The Perseverance science workforce additionally shared data on the rover, their science operations, and future plans at a media briefing on Thursday, December twelfth, throughout the annual assembly of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in Washington. As Steven Lee, the deputy challenge supervisor for the Perseverance mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, stated throughout the briefing:
“In the course of the Jezero Crater rim climb, our rover drivers have completed a tremendous job negotiating a number of the toughest terrain we’ve encountered since touchdown. They developed revolutionary approaches to beat these challenges — even tried driving backward to see if it will assist — and the rover has come by way of all of it like a champ. Perseverance is ‘go’ for every thing the science workforce needs to throw at it throughout this subsequent science marketing campaign.”
Additional Studying: NASA
News
Spring-loaded Robot Could Explore the Asteroid Belt Almost Indefinitely

The asteroid belt beckons – it incorporates sufficient sources for people to increase into the whole remainder of the photo voltaic system and has no biosphere to talk of. Basically, it’s a large mine simply ready to be exploited. So, a scholar workforce from the College of Texas at Austin has devised a plan to use it as a part of the Revolutionary Aerospace System Ideas – Educational Linkage (RASC-AL), a contest sponsored by NASA to encourage undergraduate and graduate college students to develop modern concepts to unravel a few of area exploration’s challenges. UT Austin’s submission to the competitors final yr, often known as the Autonomous Exploration By Extraterrestrial Areas (AETHER) undertaking, definitely matches that invoice.
AETHER was submitted to the AI-Powered Self-Replicating Probes sub-section of RASC-AL 2024, which solicited concepts that might advance John von Neumann’s thought of a self-replicating area probe. AETHER addresses these challenges in two distinct methods.
First, it combines a spring-loaded touchdown system and a metal-burning rocket engine to hop between totally different asteroids within the belt. To gasoline its rocket, it makes use of a system to reap water and metallic (particularly aluminum) from the floor of the asteroid it’s at the moment on, splits it into its parts, after which dumps them right into a gasoline tank that can be utilized to energy its subsequent journey to a unique asteroid. All of that is powered by a Kilowatt Reactor Utilizing Stirling TechnoloY (KRUSTY) nuclear reactor that has been present process NASA and DoE testing for over a decade.
The springs in AETHER’s legs have a two-fold goal. First, they permit for a tender touchdown on the floor of the gravitationally weak asteroid and might switch a number of the vitality created by that touchdown into saved vitality, which can be utilized to launch the system from its touchdown place later. It additionally has a set of wheels to navigate across the asteroid’s floor. When it’s time to leap off once more, it replants its legs and is derived again into area – with slightly assist from its rocket engine.
The rocket engine designed as a part of AETHER can burn metallic, corresponding to aluminum, that the craft harvests from the asteroid to make use of as gasoline. It’s the major system designed to take the craft from asteroid to asteroid, and it’s meant to be a high-delta-v choice for doing so rapidly.
AETHER additionally tries to imitate a von Neumann probe by utilizing a machine-learning algorithm to enhance its resource-harvesting efforts. It could take knowledge from varied sensors, together with artificial aperture radar and a spectrometer, and estimate the place the perfect spot could be to land to refuel. Whereas accumulating that extra gasoline materials, it will talk again with Earth by way of a high-speed optical communication hyperlink, permitting an Earth-based server to replace the machine studying parameters and enhance the algorithm’s consequence for the following hop.
Credit score – HeroX YouTuBe Channel
The unique mission design for AETHER has it stopping at two particular asteroids earlier than shifting on to as-yet-unnamed ones. The primary, which might be no shock, is Psyche, the large metallic asteroid that’s about to be visited by its personal devoted probe. Information from that probe will assist inform the primary iteration of AETHER’s studying algorithm, and the enter the sensors present from its go to will replace it earlier than its subsequent step – Themis. That asteroid, although smaller, is predicted to comprise a considerable amount of water ice, which is a mandatory element for AETHER’s rocket engines.
After visiting the primary two asteroids, the mission strikes on to locations unknown, as finishing these steps could be thought of a hit. However given the longevity of the KRUSTY reactor and the craft’s capability to refill its personal gasoline tank, it’s potential, and even possible, that AETHER would contemplate working effectively previous its rendezvous with Themis.
The UT Austin workforce was comprised solely of undergraduate college students, although it’s unclear what yr of research they had been in. However, given their expertise with the 2024 model of RASC-AL, they would appear well-placed to submit a undertaking proposal for the just lately introduced 2025 model. In the event that they do, hopefully, their thought shall be simply as modern as AETHER’s.
Be taught Extra:
Flores et al – AETHER
UT – Miniaturized Jumping Robots Could Study An Asteroid’s Gravity
UT – NASA Funds the Development of a Nuclear Reactor on the Moon That Would Last for 10 Years
UT – Engineers Design a Robot That Can Stick To, Crawl Along, and Sail Around Rubble Pile Asteroids
Lead Picture:
Touchdown and take-off depiction of AETHER.
Credit score – Flores et al.
News
Two earthquakes near Malibu, one in Inland Empire rattle L.A. region

Two small earthquakes rattled the Malibu space Friday and Saturday, adopted by one other one within the Inland Empire.
The primary Malibu quake was reported round 11:44 p.m. Friday and was registered as a magnitude 3.7, with an epicenter about 6.8 miles northwest of Malibu, in line with the U.S. Geological Survey. It was felt throughout the Westside, San Fernando Valley and Ventura County in addition to within the Los Angeles Basin and South Bay.
A second quake, which was measured as a magnitude 3.5, struck in roughly the identical space at 6:30 a.m. Saturday. Residents in Ventura County reported feeling a pointy jolt, and the shaking triggered some automobile alarms.
A 3rd quake, measured at magnitude 3.5, was recorded close to the San Jacinto Mountains in Riverside County at 2:16 p.m. Saturday, with an epicenter a number of miles south of Idyllwild.
There have been no reviews of harm from any of the quakes.

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Heavy Rain Strikes Kentucky and Tennessee

Uncommon downpours in February started to pound a broad swath of the Decrease Mississippi Valley, from western parts of Kentucky and Tennessee and increasing to southwestern Virginia, officers and residents reported on Saturday.
Flooding in these areas could possibly be “life-threatening,” the Nationwide Climate Service stated on Saturday. It additionally stated that widespread flash flooding was anticipated over components of the decrease Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee Valleys.
“That is unprecedented for mid-February, at the least within the final 20 years,” stated Phil Baker, a meteorologist with the Nationwide Climate Service in Memphis, of the rain in Kentucky and Tennessee.
Whereas there have been no fast stories of deaths or catastrophic property harm, officers warned residents to be ready for the heavy rain, and not to drive by way of floodwaters as a result of the water can change into electrified.
Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky said on Saturday afternoon {that a} landslide would preserve Freeway 160 in Knott County closed for a number of hours. Mr. Beshear additionally stated that the water in Elizabethtown, a metropolis of 33,000 residents, was reaching document ranges. Some houses in Perry County had been evacuated, he stated.
In Tennessee, officers stated that some roads, principally within the western a part of the state, had been flooding, together with State Route 210 in Lauderdale County.
For the remainder of the jap United States, frost, ice or snow was anticipated to coat a lot of the jap United States on Saturday into Sunday. However the uncommon springlike surge of hotter, wetter climate into Sunday morning might imply that components of the area will even face flooding rains, extreme storms, freezing rain and, within the far north, heavy snow.
Listed here are the hazards to observe for.
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Flooding rain: From northeastern Arkansas to southwestern West Virginia, there’s a average threat of extreme rainfall that would trigger rivers to rise or result in flash flooding. One to a few inches of rain fell over northwest Arkansas to northwest Tennessee on Friday evening.
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Extreme storms: Within the Deep South, primarily in northern Louisiana and Mississippi, an outbreak of extreme storms that would embrace tornadoes and damaging winds is feasible from Saturday afternoon into the night.
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Heavy snow: Average to heavy snow has been hitting the Midwest, which might stand up to 13 inches of snow by Sunday. It was anticipated on Saturday to maneuver towards the Nice Lakes by way of New England. Maine might see as much as 19 inches of snow by Monday.
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Wintry combine: New York and different cities alongside the Northeast coast will see snow first on Saturday afternoon, earlier than heat air strikes in, turning the precipitation to a large number of sleet, freezing rain after which rain. Some areas, particularly near the coast, will transition shortly from snow to rain. Some average snow might fall throughout the upper elevations of the Appalachians.
The rainfall is the rarity of this mid-February storm.
The area most susceptible to flooding — together with Tennessee and Kentucky — is already soaking wet, with some rivers close to or at flood stage after having seen weeks of latest rainfall.
This uncommon quantity of moisture surging north is extra intense than the rain that has already fallen. And a few locations, like Lexington, Ky., the place three to 5 inches of rain is forecast, might break their February document for each day rainfall. (Over three inches of rain was measured there on Feb. 13, 1989.)
“A part of the issue is earlier than this rain occasion even began this morning, the grounds have already been saturated from earlier rainfall,” stated Mr. Baker, the forecaster. “There’s going to be river flooding that’s going to persist for days.”
As of Saturday, the heaviest rainfall was anticipated over northwest Tennessee and western Kentucky, Mr. Baker stated, with 4 to 6 inches of rain anticipated. As much as eight inches of rain might fall in some remoted areas, he stated.
With the bottom already saturated, forecasters in locations like Paducah, Ky., are particularly involved by a few of the outlier rainfall quantities of as much as seven inches.
“It received’t take a lot to provide flooding,” one forecaster there wrote, warning that the area “could have a major flooding occasion on our fingers.”
Forecasters within the mountainous areas within the jap areas of the locations most in danger for flooding warned that the bottom had produced situations ripe for landslides and particles flows on steep slopes across the space.
Forecasters in Charleston, W.Va., reminded residents who stay on or on the base of hillsides to observe for indicators of potential floor motion: timber leaning in uncommon orientations, or water and dust seeping in the place they aren’t anticipated.
The hotter, springlike storm is predicted to maneuver off the Atlantic seaboard by Sunday night, and winter will return on Monday.
Temperatures will plunge to under common throughout the jap United States. Snow is prone to return on Tuesday and Wednesday, coating the identical areas that will probably flood this weekend in Tennessee and Kentucky — all as a coastal storm presumably returns heavy snow again to northeast coastal cities.
Adeel Hassan contributed reporting.

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