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Perseverance rover to build first-of-its-kind Mars depot
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CNN
—
The Perseverance rover is about to build the first depot of rock and soil samples on another planet. Establishing a cache site is a milestone in the complex preparation to return the first rocks and dirt from Mars to Earth by 2033.
Within days, the rover will start dropping some of its sample tubes, containing chalk-size cores of rock and sediment collected from the Martian surface, into the depot in an area nicknamed Three Forks in Jezero Crater.
The 10 tubes will fall about 2.9 feet (88.4 centimeters) from the rover’s belly and land in different spots of level, rock-free terrain in Three Forks over the next 30 days.
The rover has been collecting pairs of samples from the rocks it has drilled into, stashing a backup set as a precaution.
The Mars Sample Return program, run jointly by NASA and the European Space Agency, will be an effort to land on Mars, retrieve the samples and return them to Earth over the next decade.
“The samples for this depot — and the duplicates held aboard Perseverance — are an incredible set representative of the area explored during the prime mission,” said Meenakshi Wadhwa, the Mars Sample Return program principal scientist, in a statement.
“We not only have igneous and sedimentary rocks that record at least two and possibly four or even more distinct styles of aqueous alteration, but also regolith, atmosphere, and a witness tube,” said Wadhwa, also director of the Arizona State University School of Earth and Space Exploration, referring to examples of volcanic and sedimentary rock, rocks that have been altered by water, surface dust and even the Martian atmosphere.
Perseverance is collecting rocks and soil as it investigates the site of an ancient lake that existed billions of years ago. This material could contain evidence of past microscopic organisms that would reveal whether life ever existed on Mars. Scientists will use some of the most sophisticated instruments to study these precious samples.
Initially, the plan was to launch a fetch rover, along with a Sample Retrieval Lander, in the mid-2020s. Once released on the Martian surface, the fetch rover would have retrieved samples from where Perseverance stashed them.
Now, Perseverance will be the primary transport vehicle to carry samples to the lander. The latest assessment of the rover shows it should still be in prime condition to deliver samples in 2030. Perseverance will back up to the lander, and the lander’s robotic arm will transfer the samples.
The Sample Retrieval Lander will carry two sample recovery helicopters, similar in style to the Ingenuity helicopter currently on Mars — rather than a fetch rover.
Engineers have been impressed with Ingenuity’s performance. The helicopter has survived more than a year beyond its expected life span and is about to perform its 37th flight. In case Perseverance can’t return the samples to the lander, the little choppers will fly away from the lander, use arms to retrieve the samples and bring them back.
“Up to now, Mars missions required just one good landing zone; we need 11,” said Richard Cook, Mars Sample Return program manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a statement.
“The first one is for the Sample Retrieval Lander, but then we need 10 more in the vicinity for our Sample Recovery Helicopters to perform takeoffs and landings, and driving too.”
The Mars Sample Return team is also focused on the pattern Perseverance will use to drop its samples.
“You can’t simply drop them in a big pile because the recovery helicopters are designed to interact with only one tube at a time,” Cook said.
The rover will drop the tubes in an intricate zigzag layout, allowing for enough space around each drop zone to make sure the helicopters can pick them up if necessary.
The Sample Retrieval Lander also carries the Mars Ascent Vehicle — the first rocket that will ever launch from the Martian surface, with the samples tucked safely inside. The spacecraft is set to launch from Mars in 2031. A separate mission will launch from Earth in the mid-2020s, called the Earth Return Orbiter, to rendezvous with the Mars Ascent Vehicle.
Onboard the Earth Return Orbiter is a system that will collect the container of samples from the Mars Ascent Vehicle while both vehicles are in orbit around the red planet.
The Earth Return Orbiter will then head back to our planet. Once the spacecraft is close to Earth, it will release a vehicle containing the cache of samples, and that spacecraft will touch down on Earth in 2033.
Perseverance’s prime mission will end on January 6 — nearly two years (and one Mars year) after it landed on the red planet. But the rover’s journey isn’t over yet.
“We will still be working the sample depot deployment when our extended mission begins on (January 7), so nothing changes from that perspective,” said Art Thompson, Perseverance’s project manager at JPL, in a statement. “However, once the table is set at Three Forks, we’ll head to the top of the delta. The science team wants to take a good look around up there.”
Perseverance will move into its new science operations, called the Delta Top Campaign, in the new year. The rover will finish climbing the steep bank of an ancient river delta that once emptied into Jezero Crater’s lake billions of years ago and arrive at the upper surface of the delta in February.
For the next eight months, Perseverance will search for boulders and additional material that the river may have carried from other parts of Mars and deposited at the delta.
“The Delta Top Campaign is our opportunity to get a glimpse at the geological process beyond the walls of Jezero Crater,” said Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist for Perseverance at JPL, in a statement.
“Billions of years ago a raging river carried debris and boulders from miles beyond the walls of Jezero. We are going to explore these ancient river deposits and obtain samples from their long-traveled boulders and rocks.”
Perseverance rover to build first-of-its-kind Mars depot
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
CNN
—
The Perseverance rover is about to build the first depot of rock and soil samples on another planet. Establishing a cache site is a milestone in the complex preparation to return the first rocks and dirt from Mars to Earth by 2033.
Within days, the rover will start dropping some of its sample tubes, containing chalk-size cores of rock and sediment collected from the Martian surface, into the depot in an area nicknamed Three Forks in Jezero Crater.
The 10 tubes will fall about 2.9 feet (88.4 centimeters) from the rover’s belly and land in different spots of level, rock-free terrain in Three Forks over the next 30 days.
The rover has been collecting pairs of samples from the rocks it has drilled into, stashing a backup set as a precaution.
The Mars Sample Return program, run jointly by NASA and the European Space Agency, will be an effort to land on Mars, retrieve the samples and return them to Earth over the next decade.
“The samples for this depot — and the duplicates held aboard Perseverance — are an incredible set representative of the area explored during the prime mission,” said Meenakshi Wadhwa, the Mars Sample Return program principal scientist, in a statement.
“We not only have igneous and sedimentary rocks that record at least two and possibly four or even more distinct styles of aqueous alteration, but also regolith, atmosphere, and a witness tube,” said Wadhwa, also director of the Arizona State University School of Earth and Space Exploration, referring to examples of volcanic and sedimentary rock, rocks that have been altered by water, surface dust and even the Martian atmosphere.
Perseverance is collecting rocks and soil as it investigates the site of an ancient lake that existed billions of years ago. This material could contain evidence of past microscopic organisms that would reveal whether life ever existed on Mars. Scientists will use some of the most sophisticated instruments to study these precious samples.
Initially, the plan was to launch a fetch rover, along with a Sample Retrieval Lander, in the mid-2020s. Once released on the Martian surface, the fetch rover would have retrieved samples from where Perseverance stashed them.
Now, Perseverance will be the primary transport vehicle to carry samples to the lander. The latest assessment of the rover shows it should still be in prime condition to deliver samples in 2030. Perseverance will back up to the lander, and the lander’s robotic arm will transfer the samples.
The Sample Retrieval Lander will carry two sample recovery helicopters, similar in style to the Ingenuity helicopter currently on Mars — rather than a fetch rover.
Engineers have been impressed with Ingenuity’s performance. The helicopter has survived more than a year beyond its expected life span and is about to perform its 37th flight. In case Perseverance can’t return the samples to the lander, the little choppers will fly away from the lander, use arms to retrieve the samples and bring them back.
“Up to now, Mars missions required just one good landing zone; we need 11,” said Richard Cook, Mars Sample Return program manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a statement.
“The first one is for the Sample Retrieval Lander, but then we need 10 more in the vicinity for our Sample Recovery Helicopters to perform takeoffs and landings, and driving too.”
The Mars Sample Return team is also focused on the pattern Perseverance will use to drop its samples.
“You can’t simply drop them in a big pile because the recovery helicopters are designed to interact with only one tube at a time,” Cook said.
The rover will drop the tubes in an intricate zigzag layout, allowing for enough space around each drop zone to make sure the helicopters can pick them up if necessary.
The Sample Retrieval Lander also carries the Mars Ascent Vehicle — the first rocket that will ever launch from the Martian surface, with the samples tucked safely inside. The spacecraft is set to launch from Mars in 2031. A separate mission will launch from Earth in the mid-2020s, called the Earth Return Orbiter, to rendezvous with the Mars Ascent Vehicle.
Onboard the Earth Return Orbiter is a system that will collect the container of samples from the Mars Ascent Vehicle while both vehicles are in orbit around the red planet.
The Earth Return Orbiter will then head back to our planet. Once the spacecraft is close to Earth, it will release a vehicle containing the cache of samples, and that spacecraft will touch down on Earth in 2033.
Perseverance’s prime mission will end on January 6 — nearly two years (and one Mars year) after it landed on the red planet. But the rover’s journey isn’t over yet.
“We will still be working the sample depot deployment when our extended mission begins on (January 7), so nothing changes from that perspective,” said Art Thompson, Perseverance’s project manager at JPL, in a statement. “However, once the table is set at Three Forks, we’ll head to the top of the delta. The science team wants to take a good look around up there.”
Perseverance will move into its new science operations, called the Delta Top Campaign, in the new year. The rover will finish climbing the steep bank of an ancient river delta that once emptied into Jezero Crater’s lake billions of years ago and arrive at the upper surface of the delta in February.
For the next eight months, Perseverance will search for boulders and additional material that the river may have carried from other parts of Mars and deposited at the delta.
“The Delta Top Campaign is our opportunity to get a glimpse at the geological process beyond the walls of Jezero Crater,” said Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist for Perseverance at JPL, in a statement.
“Billions of years ago a raging river carried debris and boulders from miles beyond the walls of Jezero. We are going to explore these ancient river deposits and obtain samples from their long-traveled boulders and rocks.”
First-of-Its-Kind Study Confirms Daily Steps Lower Chronic Disease Risk : ScienceAlert
The results are in from a study of real-world data collected from the wearable devices of 6,042 people in the US – and it seems that taking more steps every day really can reduce your risk of developing certain types of diseases.
Obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, and sleep apnea are some of the health issues that can be avoided by cranking up the number and intensity of daily steps you take, according to the findings of this latest study.
While previous studies have come to similar conclusions, this is the first piece of research to be based on commercial activity tracking devices, commonly used as part of daily life, and linked to electronic health records (EHRs), in this case as part of the US National Institutes of Health’s All of Us research program.
This data provides “new, empiric evidence of activity levels associated with chronic disease risk and suggests that integration of commercial wearables data into the EHR may be valuable to support clinical care,” write the researchers in their published paper.
An average of four years of activity per participant was logged, with the sample based on people who wore their own Fitbit for 10 or more hours a day for at least six months.
Daily step counts and intensity (defined as steps per minute) were then referenced against disease incidence within the group and compared with rates of disease in the general population.
The results showed that as steps increased, the risk of most conditions declined. The exception was for hypertension and diabetes – in these two cases, once individuals reached around 8,000 to 9,000 steps per day, the benefit of adding more steps plateaued.
Around 8,200 steps and above seems to be the sweet spot for seriously reducing the risk of conditions including obesity, sleep apnea, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), and major depressive disorder.
The researchers also found that overweight people who increased their daily steps from 6,000 to 11,000 were 64 percent less likely to become obese than those who maintained the same daily step count.
While these statistics don’t show a direct cause-and-effect relationship (there are plenty of other factors involved too), the association is strong enough to indicate that taking more steps each day, and upping the intensity to a brisker pace, can reduce your risk of disease.
Past studies have monitored physical activity over short periods of time using research-grade devices and looking at health outcomes years or even decades later, whereas this new research was able to analyze years of activity data collected daily from patients’ own wearable devices and linked to current diagnostic records.
“Although some fidelity is lost between research-grade and commercial devices, data from the latter is highly generalizable to a large portion of the public who own such devices,” write the researchers.
That said, the people involved in the study were relatively young, mostly white, female, and college-educated, who owned Fitbit devices and were, on average, more active than most adults. But the study authors see this as positive.
“The fact that we were able to detect robust associations between steps and incident disease in this active sample suggests even stronger associations may exist in a more sedentary population.”
They are now keen to carry out more research using larger and more diverse samples of people, including those with activity levels that more closely mirror the general population,
Based on previous studies, there’s a consensus that getting in several thousand steps a day is enough to help you live longer – and even random and sporadic bursts of activity can be beneficial, as well as planned and consistent walking.
The researchers behind the new study think that daily step routines could be included as part of personalized health plans, with consumer wearables and their associated apps good enough to provide around-the-clock monitoring.
“Although validation in a more diverse sample is needed, these findings provide a real-world evidence-base for clinical guidance regarding activity levels that are necessary to reduce disease risk,” write the researchers.
The research has been published in Nature Medicine.
Remains of small armoured dinosaur unearthed in Argentina in first-of-its-kind discovery
Palaeontologists have announced the discovery of a previously unknown small, armoured dinosaur in southern Argentina.
Key points:
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Named jakapil kaniukura, the dinosaur weighed up to 7 kilograms
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The dinosaur is part of the thyreophoran group that includes the likes of stegosaurus
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Lead paleontologist Sebastián Apesteguía said the discovery was a first of its kind
The Cretaceous period dinosaur, named jakapil kaniukura, marks a first-of-its-kind discovery of an armoured dinosaur from the Cretaceous in South America.
Scientists believe the dinosaur likely walked upright on its back legs and roamed about 100 million years ago.
With rows of bony disk-shaped armour along its neck, back and down to its tail, the dinosaur is believed to have been well-protected.
It measured about 5 feet (1.5 metres) long and weighed between 4 kilograms and 7kg, similar to an average house cat.
Its fossilised remains were dug up over the past decade near a dam in Patagonia in Rio Negro province’s La Buitrera paleontological zone.
The scientists described jakapil in a study published on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.
It is part of the thyreophoran dinosaur group that includes the likes of stegosaurus, known for its bony back plates and spiky tail, and tank-like ankylosaurus, covered in armour and wielding a club-like tail.
Lead paleontologist Sebastián Apesteguía and his colleagues found a partial skeleton of jakapil along with 15 tooth fragments featuring a leaf-like shape, similar to iguana teeth.
Jakapil resembles a primitive form of thyreophoran that lived much earlier, making it a surprise that it dated from the Cretaceous.
Professor Apesteguía said never before had such a thyreophoran been dug up anywhere in the southern hemisphere.
Reuters
Scientists develop first-of-its-kind implant that relieves pain without drugs
Researchers at the Northwestern University have developed a device that sounds straight out of science fiction: a small, soft, flexible first-of-its-kind implant that relieves pain on demand, without the use of drugs and dissolves.
The biocompatible, water-soluble device could provide a much-needed alternative to opioids and other highly addictive medications. As per the researchers, the device could be highly valuable for patients who undergo routine surgeries or amputations that most often need post-operative medications. Surgeons could implant the device during the procedure to ‘manage’ the patient’s post-operative pain.
The study published in the July 1 issue of the journal Science, describes the device’s design and demonstrates its efficacy in an animal model.
The devices employs a simple mechanism
“Although opioids are extremely effective, they also are extremely addictive,” said Northwestern’s John A. Rogers, who led the device’s development, in a press release. “As engineers, we are motivated by the idea of treating pain without drugs — in ways that can be turned on and off instantly, with user control over the intensity of relief. The technology reported here exploits the mechanism that causes your fingers to feel numbers when cold. Our implant demonstrates in animal model studies that this effect can be produced in a programmable way, directly and locally to targeted nerves, even those deep within surrounding soft tissues.”
So, how does it work?
The implant leverages a simple concept – evaporation. It contains a liquid coolant that is prompted to evaporate at the specific location of a sensory nerve.
To elaborate, the device works by wrapping around nerves softly, to deliver precise and targeted cooling. This in turn numbs nerves and blocks pain signals to the brain. An external pump helps the user to remotely activate the device and control its intensity. Once the device is no longer required, it is naturally absorbed into the body — “bypassing the need for surgical extraction”.
At the thickness of a sheet of paper, the soft, elastic nerve cooling device is ideal for treating highly sensitive nerves.
Study co-author Dr. Matthew MacEwan of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis said that as nerves become cooler, the signals that travel through them become slower – eventually stopping completely.
“We are specifically targeting peripheral nerves, which connect your brain and your spinal cord to the rest of your body. These are the nerves that communicate sensory stimuli, including pain. By delivering a cooling effect to just one or two targeted nerves, we can effectively modulate pain signals in one specific region of the body,” he said.
Includes an integrated senor to monitor the temperature of the nerve
The device contains tiny microfluidic channels to induce the cooling effect. While one channel contains the liquid coolant perfluoropentane (which is already clinically approved), a second channel contains dry nitrogen. When the liquid and gas flow into a shared chamber, a reaction takes place causing the liquid to immediately evaporate. Concurrently, a tiny integrated sensor monitors the temperature of the nerve to ensure that it doesn’t get too cold, which could damage the tissue.
“By monitoring the temperature at the nerve, the flow rates can be adjusted automatically to set a point that blocks pain in a reversible, safe manner. On-going work seeks to define the full set of time and temperature thresholds below which the process remains fully reversible,” said Rogers.
Former cooling therapies and nerve blockers have limitations, which the new device overcomes. Cryotherapies, for example, approach large areas of tissue, which could lead to unwanted effects. Here, Northwestern’s tiny device is just five millimeters wide and precisely targets only the affected nerves. This spares surrounding areas from unnecessary cooling.
“You don’t want to inadvertently cool other nerves or the tissues that are unrelated to the nerve transmitting the painful stimuli,” said MacEwan. “We want to block the pain signals, not the nerves that control motor function and enable you to use your hand, for example.”
The final disappearing act
The device isn’t Rogers’ first attempt at a bioresorbable electronic one.
The Rogers lab introduced the concept of transient electronics in 2012, and in 2018, Rogers, MacEwan, and colleagues demonstrated the world’s first bioresorbable electronic device — a biodegradable implant that speeds nerve regeneration. Then, in 2021, Rogers and colleagues introduced a transient pacemaker.
All components of the devices naturally absorb into the body’s biofluids over days or weeks, without requiring surgical extraction.
“If you think about soft tissues, fragile nerves, and a body that’s in constant motion, any interfacing device must have the ability to flex, bend, twist, and stretch easily and naturally,” Rogers said. “Furthermore, you would like the device to simply disappear after it is no longer needed, to avoid delicate and risky procedures for surgical removal.”
‘First-of-its-kind’ nasal spray that prevents COVID-19 could be available this year
ITHACA, N.Y. – A nasal spray that blocks COVID-19 infection and treats people who are already sick could be available within the next six months, according to researchers at Cornell University. Their study discovered a small molecule that people can spray into their noses which prevents COVID from infecting human cells.
In experiments on lab cells and in mice, researchers found that the molecule N-0385 can both protect against infection in healthy individuals and eases symptoms in patients using the spray within 12 hours of exposure to COVID. For humans, the team believes this could soon become a new coronavirus treatment that only requires a few daily doses.
“There are very few, if any, small molecule antivirals that have been discovered that work prophylactically to prevent infection,” explains Hector Aguilar-Carreno, associate professor of virology in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the College of Veterinary Medicine, in a university release. “A TMPRSS2 Inhibitor ACTS as a pan-SARS-CoV-2 prophylactic and therapeutic.”
“This is the first of its kind,” Aguilar-Carreno adds. “One advantage is that it works early in the infection, even after someone has already acquired the virus.”
Researchers add that they tested the nasal spray against the original COVID strain and the Delta variant. Although they didn’t examine its effectiveness against the more recent Omicron variant, the Cornell team is optimistic the results will remain the same.
Ready for use in 6 months?
The researchers developed this molecule in collaboration with a team from Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec. A California-based company, EBVIA Therapeutics, Inc., is now raising funds so scientists can start human trials and eventually begin drug development and mass production of the spray.
Study authors say if all of that comes together and the human trials are successful, the nasal spray could apply for and receive FDA emergency-use approval within six months.
“The N-0385 therapy is simpler and less expensive to mass produce than other types of COVID-19 treatments, such as monoclonal antibodies,” Aguilar-Carreno says.
How does the molecule work?
Coronaviruses use the now-infamous spike protein to grab and infect a patient’s cells. To do that, the virus binds to a receptor on the surface of a healthy cell. During their study, researchers targeted a specific enzyme, TMPRSS2, which plays a key role in allowing the spike to fuse with the cell membrane.
The team identified a number of small molecules, including N-0385, which might be able to disable TMPRSS2’s cell-infecting abilities. Scientists examined each molecule’s ability to knock out TMPRSS2, first in lab experiments using human respiratory cells and later in genetically engineered mice.
Researchers altered the mice to carry human receptors on their cells, so the team could see if N-0385 could prevent infection before, during, and after exposure to COVID-19. All of those tests revealed that the intranasally introduced molecule works at stopping weight loss in mice — a key sign of infection in these animals. For mice exposed to the virus before taking the nasal spray, it kept them from dying during the experiment.
The study is published in the journal Nature.