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Exploration

space: A New NASA Mars Rover Will Arrive on the Red Planet in February

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Mars Rover Perseverence - NASA

The long deep-space journey of NASA’s next Mars rover is nearly over. The car-size Perseverance rover, which launched on July 30 of last year, is scheduled to land inside the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater on Feb. 18. “I am thrilled to be here today as our countdown to Mars winds down from months to just weeks,” Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said during a news conference on Wednesday (Jan. 27). “Perseverance is closing in on the Red Planet, and our team is preparing for her to touch down in Jezero Crater.” Perseverance is the centerpiece of … Read more

Boston Dynamics “Robot Dog” Trains to Explore the Caverns of Mars

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Boston Dynamics Robot Dog

Mars exploration is going to the dogs. The robot dogs, that is. Scientists are equipping four-legged, animal-mimicking robots with artificial intelligence (AI) and an array of sensing equipment to help the bots autonomously navigate treacherous terrain and subsurface caves on the Red Planet.  In a presentation on Dec. 14 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), held online this year, researchers with NASA/JPL-Caltech introduced their “Mars Dogs,” which can maneuver in ways the iconic wheeled rovers such as Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity and the recently launched Perseverance never could. The new robots’ agility and resilience are coupled with … Read more

Are the 2020s “The Decade of Mars”?

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Mars - Pixabay

The 2010s saw big advances in Mars exploration, but the new decade may bring even more exciting news — the possible discovery of Red Planet life. Scientists learned a great deal about the history and evolution of Mars in the last 10 years. NASA’s Curiosity rover mission led the charge, determining that at least some parts of the planet were capable of supporting Earth-like life for long stretches in the ancient past. “It’s been a very successful and very enlightening mission, in terms of figuring out that Mars was a habitable planet,” Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA’s Jet … Read more

SPACE: The Hopping Landers of Ryugu

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Hoppy Laner - Ryugu - Live Science

The suspense is over: Two tiny hopping robots have successfully landed on an asteroid called Ryugu — and they’ve even sent back some wild postcards from their new home. The tiny rovers are part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hayabusa2 asteroid sample-return mission. Engineers with the agency deployed the robots early Friday (Sept. 21), but JAXA waited until today (Sept. 22) to confirm the operation was successful and both rovers made the landing safely. The rovers are part of the MINERVA-II1 program, and are designed to hop along the asteroid’s surface, taking photographs and gathering data. In fact, one … Read more

FILM: Ryan Reynolds Open to Exploring Deadpool’s Sexuality

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Ryan Reynolds - twitter pic

Ryan Reynolds has said he would “love” to explore his character Deadpool’s sexuality more in future films. The R-rated superhero franchise became the first to feature out LGBT characters on the big screen, with Deadpool 2 revealing that Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) is a lesbian and introducing her girlfriend Yukio (Shioli Kutsuna). But star Ryan Reynolds is hoping to go further, and explore the lead character’s sexuality too, with Reynolds and Deadpool 1 director Tim Miller having previously described Deadpool as pansexual. Speaking during a Q&A at Comic-Con San Diego, Reynolds said: “I certainly think that this universe needs to represent and … Read more

News: NASA’s three-billion-mile journey to Pluto reaches historic encounter

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To boldly go indeed! NASA’s three-billion-mile journey to Pluto reaches historic encounter After a decade-long journey through our solar system, New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto Tuesday, about 7,750 miles above the surface — roughly the same distance from New York to Mumbai, India — making it the first-ever space mission to explore a world so far from Earth. See the full article