Below is the first of several color images sent back from Mars by the Perseverance Rover.

This is the first high-resolution, color image to be sent back by the Hazard Cameras (Hazcams) on the underside NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover after its landing on Feb. 18, 2021.

In this next image, a high-resolution color Hazard Cameras (Hazcams) captures an image of one of the six aluminum wheels aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover.

For this mission, NASA mounted a total of 23 cameras on Perseverance and the landing craft to provide some unprecedented views of the landing.

One of the cameras mounted on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image of NASA’s Perseverance rover falling thorough the Martian atmosphere with its parachute trailing behind.

Finally, in this high-resolution still image, you can see the rover being lowered to the surface of Mars. This image is part of a video taken by a camera aboard the descent stage as it performed what NASA calls the sky-crane maneuver.

The full hi-definition videos of the landing, taken by all of the various cameras will be released by NASA in the coming days.

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While the video stream will broadcast live, because of the time delay between the Earth and Mars, by the time we start seeing the feed of the beginning of the landing phase, Perseverance will actually already be on the surface of Mars – hopefully.

Unlike missions to Mars of the past, this one will provide a number of incredible videos of various stages of the landing. Taking a cue from SpaceX, NASA has equipped Perseverance and the landing vehicles with a number of High-Definition cameras.

Watch Live Video Stream of Perseverance Rover Landing on Mars:

A little while after the Perseverance Rover has completed its landing, that video footage will be beamed back to earth. NASA will then release the various high-definition videos of the landing for the public to enjoy.

Many of us have already enjoyed the spectacular videos from recent SpaceX launches here on Earth. Similarly, the cameras mounted on the Perseverance lander will give the world an unprecedented view of a spacecraft entering the atmosphere and landing on another planet – Mars.

Perseverance is the “biggest, heaviest, cleanest, and most sophisticated robotic geologist ever launched into space,” according the NASA. The rover will search the Jezero Crater on for signs of ancient life on Mars. It is equipped with a drill that will collect complete core samples which will be returned to Earth by a future mission vehicle.

Live video coverage of the Perseverance Rover landing, including commentary from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) begins at 2:15 p.m. EST on Thursday Feb. 18, 2021.

In addition to the online live streams, the rover landing will also air on the NASA TV Public Channel. Online video sources to watch the Perseverance Rover Mars Landing include: NASA App, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitch, Daily Motion, and THETA.TV.

Perseverance is scheduled to touchdown on the surface of Mars at 3:55 p.m. EST.

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If you’ve ever dreamed of flying on a rocket into space, this is literally your chance. In addition to providing this once in a lifetime opportunity, the proceeds from the sweepstakes will provide funding to an incredibly worthy charity – the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Jared Isaacman. founder of Shift4 Payments has committed $100 million as a donation to St. Jude’s and is providing 2 of the 4 seats on the SpaceX capsule for this fund raiser.

Isaacman and another billionaire will occupy seats one and two. Seat 3 will be awarded to a St. Jude mission ambassador, to be selected, who will exemplify the mission pillar of Hope.

The fourth seat will go to one lucky winner of the sweepstakes fundraiser drawing. To enter the drawing, simply go to this Prizeo web site (the company organizing the drawing), and make a donation to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The goal is to raise an additional $100 million for the noble charity.

As can be seen, there are a variety of donation levels, and each will provide you with about 10 sweepstakes tickets for every dollar donated – starting at 100 tickets for a $10 donation.

There is also a variety of merchandise, including mission patches, shirts, and even a ride in a Mig-29, which are given to those who donate at various levels.

St. Jude’s is celebrating its 59th anniversary. Over the years they have achieved a 94% survival rate for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a disease once considered incurable.

Recently they have launched St. Jude Global, a mission to dramatically improve pediatric cancer outcomes for all children, including those in low- and middle-income countries where survival rates lag far behind the U.S.

So, if you were planning to donate to charity this year, and every dreamed about going into space, now is the perfect time to donate to save children from cancer.

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You can watch the complete Mars Perseverance Rover mission overview video below, but read on as we describe the key mission events as well.

The Mars Perseverance Rover will use a landing system much like that of the Curiosity rover. As it enters the atmosphere a parachute will help to initially slow the descent vehicle carrying Perseverance to the surface.

Next, the descent vehicle will use it engines to continue decelerating as it nears the surface. Finally, the descent vehicle will lower the Perseverance Rover the final few feet to the Martian surface before cutting its cables and flying away – referred to as a “skycrane maneuver.”

According to NASA, this type of landing system enables the agency to land much larger and heavier rovers without damaging them. Smaller, earlier rovers like Pathfinder essentially bounced the final few meters to the surface surrounded by airbags.

Once on the surface, Perseverance will begin what is planned to be at least a one year mission of exploration. The rover will be searching for signs of past microbial life on Mars. This time the rover has a drill and will collect and store core samples and soil samples.

Perseverance will also test a new technology – a way to extract oxygen from the 96% carbon dioxide Martian atmosphere. This is a very exciting test as it could be a big step forward for a human presence on Mars.

Another exciting moment will occur during the mission when the Perseverance rover unveils the new Mars Helicopter. That’s right, NASA will be testing its first powered flight vehicle on Mars.

We will provide a live stream of the Mars Perseverance Rover landing to allow our readers to watch the Mars landing play out live on February 18, 2021 – be sure to come back to watch that event here.

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For those not familiar, the Starship is the next evolution of SpaceX’s fleet of rockets and spacecraft. This one will eventually take us to Mars and beyond. Yesterday’s test flight was a high-altitude test of the Starship spacecraft (serial number 8 or SN8). The test did not include the booster rocket which will eventually be used when a Starship blasts off to leave the earth.

Watch the full Video replay of the SpaceX Starship test flight below in this article.

The Starship is 160ft tall and has the ability to carry over 100 tons of payload. During a mission launch, Starship will sit atop a SpaceX Super Heavy booster rocket capable of 16 million pounds of thrust. With the two stacked for launch, the complete Starship System stands 394 feet tall.

“SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket (collectively referred to as Starship) represent a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond. Starship will be the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, with the ability to carry in excess of 100 metric tonnes to Earth orbit.” – SpaceX.com

The test flight yesterday was to see if the Starship spacecraft could complete a number of important functions for flight and re-entry. As you can see in the video replay below, it started with a launch of Starship and a high-altitude climb. Next the vehicle transitioned into a landing phase.

Part of the landing phase included a spectacular transition from vertical flight into horizontal flight, using its wing-like fins for maneuvering.

As it neared the ground, the Starship transitioned back to a vertical position and initiated its landing burn.

Although the engines fired to execute the landing, the final descent rate at touchdown was a little higher than planned. The result was the explosion of the SpaceX Starship which has been the focus of video streamed online and on news broadcasts.

On its YouTube page SpaceX talks about the test flight. “On Wednesday, December 9, Starship serial number 8 (SN8) lifted off from our Cameron County launch pad and successfully ascended, transitioned propellant, and performed its landing flip maneuver with precise flap control to reach its landing point.”

“Low pressure in the fuel header tank during the landing burn led to high touchdown velocity resulting in a hard (and exciting!) landing. Thank you to all the locals supporting our efforts in Cameron County and beyond. Congratulations to the entire Starship and SpaceX teams on today’s test! Serial number 9 (SN9) is up next – Mars, here we come!”

The company, and its founder Elon Musk, were very pleased with the test flight despite the explosion. All phases of the flight went extremely well, proving that the system works.

The pressure issue in the header tank has now been identified and will be corrected. As any engineer will tell you, you often learn a lot more from a system failure than from a success. That’s why the call them ‘test’ flights.

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The Arecibo telescope is one of the largest radio telescopes in the world. Weighing in at 1.8 million pounds, Arecibo’s massive structure was suspended by cables attached to towers in the mountains of Puerto Rico.

Those outside the astronomy community may remember the telescope as it was used in the film ‘Contact’ starring Jodi Foster. The Arecibo telescope was being used in the SETI (search to extraterrestrial intelligence) program in the movie – and in real life.

The first indication of trouble came on November 6, 2020 when the first of 3 support cables broke. Engineers were on scene to evaluate the damage and develop a plan to repair the telescope. The remaining 2 cables should have been able to support the telescope while repairs were being made.

However, at only 60% of its designed breaking strength, a second cable broke. This signaled to engineers that the cables had grown very weak over time, and from hurricanes over the years. As a result, it was deemed unsafe to attempt repairs.

Staff working at the other facilities in the Arecibo Observatory were warned of the danger. Fortunately, they took the appropriate precautions to keep everyone safely away from the main telescope.

Earlier this week, at 8:55am eastern time on December 1, 2020, the structure completely collapsed. Fortunately, no one was injured but there was damage to some of the other facilities at Arecibo.

What’s next for Arecibo?

The University of Central Florida (UCF) currently operates the facility. They receive funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Together the two are working on plans to maintain other elements of the facility and make repairs to those damaged in the collapse. There are currently no plans to resurrect the 305-meter telescope however.

“We are saddened by this situation but thankful that no one was hurt,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan.

“When engineers advised NSF that the structure was unstable and presented a danger to work teams and Arecibo staff, we took their warnings seriously and continued to emphasize the importance of safety for everyone involved. Our focus is now on assessing the damage, finding ways to restore operations at other parts of the observatory, and working to continue supporting the scientific community, and the people of Puerto Rico.”

Among the facilities being repaired include the observatory’s 12-meter radio astronomy telescope, and the roof of the LIDAR facility.

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The automated flight, 27 hours long, began with a dramatic night launch from Kennedy Space Center. The SpaceX capsule carrying 4 NASA astronauts then docked with the International Space Station late on Monday night.

Watch the SpaceX video replay of Crew Mission 1 Docking with the ISS below:

The connection occurred when the capsule was 262 miles above the Earth. Kate Rubins, on making the first radio contact to the dragon’s commander, remarked how pleasant it was to hear a human voice.

This is the second time that SpaceX has launched an astronaut crew to the ISS. The first mission in October was a test mission with 2 crew onboard. This mission, Crew Mission 1, was the first official crew delivery to the ISS and marks the beginning of a new future for American astronauts traveling into orbit and beyond.

The next replacement crew for ISS is planned in April. Until then, the astronauts, a Japanese and 3 Americans, will be staying in the orbit lab.

This new crew is now united the three already onboard the ISS, including 2 Russians and an American. One of the members of this week’s Hopkins crew, Glover, is the only African-American who went for such a long journey.

The 4 members of the crew have named the capsule ‘Resilience’, owed to the fact that times are really hard for the entire world due to pandemic, and this mission can serve as hope. There was a video broadcast on Monday displaying the storehouse, screen controls and the gravity indicator while touring their capsule.

For the launch, guests were kept to minimum due to coronavirus. Even the founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk didn’t join as he tweeted that he probably has an infection.

Instead, Elon Musk’s SpaceX was represented by Gwynne Shotwell, the president of SpaceX. While Elon Musk assured that he was quite involved, just a little remotely.

Dragon crew channeled the live streams showing views of New Zealand and the pacific almost 250 miles below when they were nearing the altitude to link-up. The SpaceX headquarters radioed saying that the view looks beautiful. 

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Just hours ago, at 6:24pm EST, SpaceX launched a Satellite for the United States Space Force. The Falcon 9 launch was a second attempt from a previously postponed launch attempt on October 2.

Watch the video replay of the launch further down in the article.

During that launch attempt, automated systems aborted the launch with just seconds to go in the count. The issue was with 2 of the 9 merlin engines on Falcon 9.

There were some clogged vents in valves in the two engines which. This was from lacquer that was used to protect some sensitive engine parts while they were receiving an anti-corrosion treatment.  

SpaceX has since identified the issue and made corrections to prevent it from occurring in the future.

With 2 replacement engines, tonight’s Falcon 9 blasted off from Pad 40 into the clear night sky on Florida’s Space Coast. With the clear air, the view of the launch was easily visible from 50 miles away in the Orlando area.

Watch a replay of the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch GPS III-SV04 mission:

AS can be seen in the video replay, the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch was spectacular. All systems performed perfectly through all phases, including the landing of stage one on the recovery drone ship.

The SpaceX GPS III-SV04 mission carried an advanced GPS satellite into orbit for the U.S. Space Force. It is the third such satellite launched by SpaceX.

When complete, there will be 10 of these advanced GPS satellites in place high above the Earth. These have been designed to replace the older constellation of satellites in use by the military.

Onboard, these satellites have upgraded hardware and software which allows them to transmit higher-power signals. This makes it less likely that foreign agencies can jam the signals.

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With no atmosphere on the moon, finding water in the lunar soil in an area in full sunlight was the last thing anyone expected. But in the announcement NASA said that its, Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has in fact confirmed the existence of water on the sunlit surface of the Moon.

“Without a thick atmosphere, water on the sunlit lunar surface should just be lost to space,” said Honniball, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Yet somehow we’re seeing it. Something is generating the water, and something must be trapping it there.”

SOFIA is essentially an observatory, with a 106-inch diameter telescope, built into a Boeing 747 aircraft. Using this as their platform, astronomers are able to fly high above most of the Earth’s atmosphere for a better view of the universe.

SOFIA is usually focused on deep-sky objects like star clusters and galaxies. But in something of a test, the team tried looking at the moon. They were testing to see if the telescope’s tracking system would be able to lock-on to an object so close.

“It was, in fact, the first time SOFIA has looked at the Moon, and we weren’t even completely sure if we would get reliable data, but questions about the Moon’s water compelled us to try,” said Naseem Rangwala, SOFIA’s project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.

“It’s incredible that this discovery came out of what was essentially a test, and now that we know we can do this, we’re planning more flights to do more observations.”

The water was found, using an infrared camera on the SOFIA Telescope, in the Clavius Crater. Clavius is easily seen from the Earth near the southern end of the Moon.

Some earlier discoveries of hydrogen on the lunar surface were not able to distinguish between H2O (water) and OH (hydroxyl). However, the readings by SOFIA were in the unique wavelengths specific to water.

Finding water on the moon is a huge plus for plans to begin building a sustainable colony there by the end of the decade. But before you get too excited, the amount of water is as yet uncertain.

Based on the SOFIA data, current estimates put the amount of water in the lunar soil at about 100 times less than the amount of water in sand of the Sahara Desert. Despite the small amounts, the finding shows that anything is possible, and has positive implications for future exploration.

“This discovery challenges our understanding of the lunar surface and raises intriguing questions about resources relevant for deep space exploration,” said NASA’s Paul Hertz.

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In a first for space exploration, NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft briefly reached out to ‘TAG’ the surface of asteroid Bennu – grabbing a soil sample that it is bringing back to Earth.

Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) was launched by from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida Sept. 8, 2016. Seven years later, it will return to Earth carrying the asteroid sample it obtained this week.

The spacecraft has been orbiting Bennu since its arrival in December of 2018. But today, OSIRIS-Rex extended is specially designed TAGSAM arm – plunging it into the surface of Bennu. It kicked up a lot of dust and managed to collect a 5 billion-year-old soil sample for later analysis.

TAGSAM stands for Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism. As the name suggests, the design is ingeniously simple. As shown in the image and sequence video below, the TAGSAM device plunges into the soil briefly – forcing soil up into the collection area.

“This amazing first for NASA demonstrates how an incredible team from across the country came together and persevered through incredible challenges to expand the boundaries of knowledge,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.

“Our industry, academic, and international partners have made it possible to hold a piece of the most ancient solar system in our hands.”

The NASA team is working to determine whether the sample size obtained is large enough. If it is not, they will command another TAG maneuver in January. Otherwise, commands will be sent to the spacecraft, prepping it for storage of the sample.

The current plan is for the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft to exit its orbit and start heading back to Earth in March. For full mission details, visit this NASA.gov link.

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