Martian Moves: Perseverance's Journey and Fashionable Microbes in Space

This is Spacetime Series twenty eight, episode one hundred and fifty one, for broadcast on the twenty fourth of December twenty twenty five. Coming up on Space Time, NASA's Mass Perseverance Rover finally moving to a new location on the rim of jest Row Crater using microbes to make space fashion. Looks like those one designed silver space suits from the sci fi movies of the fifties won't be making a comeback after all, and the expedition seventy three astronauts returned safely to Earth following their eight months stay aboard the International Space Station. All that and more coming up on Spacetime. Welcome to space Time with Stuart gary. Well. After nearly five years on the surface of the Red planet, NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover is finally moving on to a new location on the rim of Jesuro Crater, which has been dubbed Lactisharm. The six wheel car sized morbile laboratory has traveled over forty kilometers across the crater floor, climbing the River Delta sediments and along the crater rim. As well as continuing with its scientific mission. Manager has been evaluating the Rovers durability and testing its subsystems to see how they're coping. Like its older canterpart rover Curiosity, which has been exploring Gel Crater on a different part of Mars since twenty twelve, Perseverance has had to deal with extremes in temperature, dust, and terrain. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Passing into California, which built both Rovers, has been testing an identical counterpart to Perseverance back on Earth in order to tell how well its Martian twin is dealing with its environment. And the good news is JPL's just certified the rotary actuators which turned the rovers wheels for another sixty kilometers. Next it'll be brake testing. It's sort of like a full regio check for the rover. In fact, over the past two years, engineers have been extensively evaluating nearly all the vehicle subsystems in the same way, and their conclusion is that they believe Perseverance will be able to keep operating until at least twenty thirty one. Perseverance Deputy project manager Stevelee from JPL says the tests is showing the rover is in excellent shape. Perseverance has been driving through a Jezero crater side of an ancient lake and river system where it's been collecting scientifically compelling rock core samples, and back in September, the rover grabbed a sample of a rock which would be nicknamed Chava Falls, which scientists believe may intend a potential fingerprint of past Microbia life. In addition to a hefty suite of six scientific instruments, Perseverance has more autonomous driving capabilities than past rovers, including an autonomous planning tool known as Enhanced Autonomous Navigation or e NAV. The software looks up if the fifteen meters ahead of the rover for potential hazards. It then or by itself, chooses a path without obstacles and tells Perseverance's wheels how to steer there. Engineers at JPL meticulously plan each day of the rover's activities on Mars, but once the rover actually starts driving, it's on its own and sometimes has to react to the unexpected obstacles in its terrain. Now, pass rovers could do this to some degree, but not if the obstacles were all clustered near each other. Also, they couldn't react as far in advance, and that resulted in the vehicles driving a lot slower while approaching sand pits, rocks, and ledges. In contrast, NAPS algorithms evaluate each rover will independently against the elevation of the terrain, trade offs between different routes, and keep in or keep out areas marked by human operators for the path ahead. In fact, more than ninety percent of the rovers journey on Mars has relied on autonomous driving, making it possible to quickly collect at averse range of samples. Meanwhile, a new study reported in the journal Science claims three samples collected by Perseverance in the geological area known as the margin unit, which is along the inner edge of Jesuro Crater, may be useful for showing how ancient rocks from deep inside the Martian interior interacted with water in the atmosphere when they reach the surface, in the process helping to create conditions which would have been supportive for life had it ever existed there. Between September twenty twenty three November twenty twenty four, Perseverance ascended some four hundred meters along the margin unit, studying rocks along the way, especially those containing the mineral olivine. Scientists use minerals as timekeepers because crystals within them can record details about the precise moment conditions in which they formed. Gesro Crater in the surrounding area holds huge reserves of olivine, which form at high temperatures and typically deep within the planet, and so offer a snapshot of what's going on in a planets Interior scientists think the margin unit's olivine was made in an intrusion, a process where magma pushes into underground layers and cools into igneous rock. In this case, erosion later exposed that rock to the surface, and there it could interact with water from the crater's ancient lake system and with carbon dioxide, which was abundant in the early Martian atmosphere, and these interactions form new minerals known as carbonates, and carbonates can preserve science of past life, along with clues as to how Mars's atmosphere has changed over time. In fact, it was the combination of oliven in carbonate which was a major factor in NASA's decision to choose Gold Crater as a landing site in the first place. Together the olivin in carbonates record the interplay between rock, water, and atmosphere inside the crater, including how each changed over time. The Margin unit's olivine appears to have been altered by water at the base of the unit, where it would have been submerged, but the higher perseverance went, the more the olivine bought textures associated with magma chambers like crystallization and fewer science of water alteration. Now, as perseverance leaves the Margin unit bound for Lactoshan, mission, managers will have a chance to collect new olivine rich samples and compare the differences between the two areas. This is space time still to come using microbes to make space fashions, and the expedition's seventy three crew have returned safety to Worth following an eight month long tour of duty aboard the International Space Station. All that and more still to come on space time. A new project that fuses fashion and science is set to send bacteria to space, and the outcome could create radiation sensitive fabrics, preventing skin cancers on Earth and protecting space explorers on the Moon. To achieve all this, scientists have teamed up with fashion designers to make fabrics painted with specially designed dyes made from different types of bacteria. When this multi layered multicolored fabrics exposed to radiation and ultraviolet light, the dyes in each layer fade, revealing the layer below and leaving visible evidence of the level of radiation they've absorbed. In the future, fabrics painted with the dye could be used in space missions, helping space explorers to terminate a glance if they've been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, and they could also be used here on Earth in clinical settings providing radiation sensitive scrubs and aprons. In fact, could even be used in everyday fashions to create colour ch engine clothes to help people monitor the exposure to sunlight, thereby helping to reduce the risk of skin cancer. The studies lead author, Giles Ballet from the University of Glasgow says exposure to radiation breaks up the pigments in the bacteria in the same way similar exposure to radiation in humans breaks up DNA. For the bacteria it means a reduction in their color saturation, but of course for people it means greater risk of genic mutations and cancers. So far, the authors have developed fabrics using six different bacteria based colors. There's a red, yellow, type of pink, a blue, and an orange. Harmless bacteria naturally produce different pigments for various protective purposes. The bacteria are then applied to the fabric using specialized needles and three D printing techniques in the process creating very precise patterns and layers. When the bacteria die, they leave behind only their protective pigments in the process, creating a stable color fast fabric that responds predictably to radiation exposure. Now, once in orbit, regular images of the fabric during the year long space mission will show the changes in the color of the pigments as the satellite is exposed to months of radiation in loweth orbit. And if this mission goes as plants and we also hope to launch a more ambitious project which would take a larger piece of fabric to the surface of the Moon in twenty twenty eight and that would be the first Scottish build hardware to reach the lunar surface. The patch would be equipped with a dedicated camera and microscope to enable mission managers to broaden their understanding of how the diary reacts to long term exposure to the Moon's harsh radiation environment, and the data they collect about the radiation exposure patterns would then be used to help support safety measures for future manned larner missions. This report from the University of Glasgow. We started the projects with a really small part of money from the impact Exeration accounts from the Universe of Glasgow to investigate how to put my technology into the fashion garments of Katy Tombing. We wanted to bring space engineering, macrobilogy and artists together to try to do some outreach in a defund manner. But on the way to that we actually invented a brilliant new technology. First of a kin, that is allowing us to have a two dimensional dosimetter. You could cover full spacesuits with this fabric and that will actually measure the radiation not just on one point like it's done now, but on the full body and you also direct visual feedback for the astronauts to understand what those of radiations they've been exposed to. That really leads us also to applications on Earth for the staff at NHS Enough Care, but also for workers in the nuclear industry. The project is centered around the fact that small bacterias produces pigments to protect themselves against radiation. Part of the work that we do is pigmented bacteria that is used to dye textiles in a more sustainable ways. Instead of using synthetic dyes that contaminate water streams. Bacteria can be used as a natural alternative. The same way humans produce melanin or different types of proteins that make our hair curly or straight back, can produce these compounds that then create this pigment. So, for example, an orange bacteria has kerotine. Carrots also have kerotine. It's what makes them orange. So it's a chemical compound that the bacteria produces, and that is the color that we're using. You can stuck that up, so you will have different layers with different painting for each layer. And when you expose all of that to outer space, this will be bleached by radiation cosmic radiation X ray UV and so the layers will bleach one by one, revealing the layers below. And so if you're taking a term laps of it, you will be able to see color fading, shape changing, everything like that. So I'm working on creating the design of the colors of the bacteria on the fabric, and especially the fading element, because the more fade we get, the more we can understand the effect of the radiation on the bacteria. What I want is a result which is visually interesting, I don't want to say beautiful, but visually interesting, but also functional and useful, so we get some data from it, and that's what I'm really trying to balance. We are working with a startup in brack or spinning arounds. They are hosting this experiment with us, and so the idea is that we're going to send this brick that everything will be moushed together inside the rocket. It's going to be in space in February twenty twenty six and release for its own mission in Mass twenty twenty six. And so once it will be released by itself, we will have the camera inside the main part of the spacecraft imaging our fabric made with pigments. And the idea is if we are able to get good enough data on this mission, then we'll be able to send a larger sample, a larger experiment on the surface of the Moon to prepare the exploration of the Moon by the new astronauts. This is really possible thanks to its amazing bioprinter which is here are the Mikainoberog facility of the Advanced Research Center. And in that report from the University of Glasgow we heard from space technology lecturer Giles Ballet, microbiologist kier At Tucker, and fashion designer Katie Tubbing. This is space time still to come. The Expedition seventy three crew returned safely to Earth following an eight month long mission aboard the International Space Station, and later in the science report, a new study finds that humans have been making and using fire for at least three hundred and fifty thousand years, earlier than previously thought. All that and more still to come on space time. The Expedition seventy three crew have returned safely to Worth following an eight month long tour of duty board the International Space Station. Their Sawyers MS twenty seven capsule touched down on the frozen Kazakh Steps just three hours after departing from the orbiting our post. Their replacement Expedition seventy four crew arrived on station two weeks earlier aboard their Sawyer's MS twenty eight spacecraft, and that may well wind up being the last man Sawyer's launched for quite some time after their rocket's jet blast destroyed key structural components of the launch pad during the liftoff. The Russian Federal Space Agency at os Cosmos says repairs to the facility could take over a year, and Moscow has no other launch complexes designed to handle manned spacecraft. Ross Cosmos has already dulled back their manned launch frequencies to just one flight every eight months due to Kremlin budget cuts. That compares to NASA's manned space program, which has been flying crews to the space station every six months using SpaceX Dragon spacecraft under the agency's Commercial Crew program. While on station, the expedition seventy three crew were involved in more than two hundred and fifty experiments. Included studying the behavior of bioprinted tissues containing blood vessels in microgravity that will help advance space based tissue production to treat patients on Earth. They also evaluated the remote commanding of multiple robots in space for the Surface Avatar study that could support the development of robotic assistance for future exploration missions, and they worked on developing in space manufacturing of DNA mimicking nanomaterials which could improve drug delivery technologies and support emerging therapeutics in regenerative medicines. This is space time and time that to take another brief look at some of the other stories making use in science this week with the Science Report. A new study has shown that people who experience intense and prolonged grief after the loss of a loved one are more likely to die over the following ten years. A reporting the journal Frontiers in Public Health looked at one thousand, seven hundred and thirty five people in Denmark who had recently lost a partner, a parent, or a close loved one. They studied these people over a ten year period see how the intensity and duration of their symptoms of grief impacted their physical and mental health. The authors found that six percent of the group experienced high levels of grief symptoms. Those people had an eighty eight percent higher risk of death compared to those with lower grief symptoms. People experiencing intense grief also used more healthcare services, especially around therapy and medications for mental health, although this link disappeared by about eight years. Archaeologists have found that humans were already making and using fire three hundred and fifty thousand years earlier than previously thought. The authors found baked clay, heat chatted flint axes, and pieces of pyrite stone used to create sparks a disused clay pit in England dating back some four hundred thousand years. The authors were able to prove that the clay was subjected to temperatures are more than seven hundred degrees celsius on repeated occasions at the same location, and that indicates a campfire or hearth being used by people several occasions, and therefore it wasn't simply a case of burning due to wildfire. The findings reported in the journal Nature suggests the site wasn't made by homosapiens, but more likely by some of the oldest Neanderthal groups. The authors believe the discovery's clear evidence that hominids were creating controlling fire four hundred thousand years ago, and that has implications for human development and evolution. A new study shows that one in ten boys between the ages of ten and eighteen meet the clinical diagnostic criteria for computer game addiction, also known as Internet gaming disorder. The findings reported in the General Addiction also indicate that while boys are more easily hooked on gaming. Just one to two percent of girls developed this kind of problem. The studies authors say the reason is simply a case of boys being far more competitive than girls. Previous research has already shown that the brain releases dopamine in its reward center when you do activities you enjoy, like gaming. This release increases when you expect a positive experience and when the expectation is actually met. The new findings are based on the study of eight hundred and twelve young people in the city of Totdheim, Norway, who were followed up five times from the age of ten to eighteen, with participants roughly equally divided between boys and girls. The authors found that the proportion who were heavily involved in gaming increases from the age of ten to about the age of sixteen, but it then starts to fall again by the age of eighteen. Well, of course, tomorrow's Christmas, and if like me, you're a last minute shopper, well maybe the thing your loved one really wants is a new printer. Stop smiling. We're being serious here, quite honestly, if you are looking for a print, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions, how often will you be using it? What features do you really need? With a quick guy to buying the right printer, we're joined by technology editor Alex Saharov right from Tech Advice Start Life. The salesman was saying that it should run out of ink, you just buy a whole new printer. But the problem with that is that new printers come with starter cartridges that only have a small amount of ink in side, so of enough to get you going and do a few prints. And then you buy brand new ink cartridges which have the larger amount of ink inside, but are still quite small compared to the amount of pages you can get from a laser printer with toner, which is powdered black ink. And if you buy a color laser printer, I mean the cost of the cartridges can be quite expensive compared to just buying a cheap and simple inkjet printer. But with a color laser printer, the tona never dries up because it's powder, whereas with ink cartridges the ink and dry up. Now we do have the problem of the smaller ink cartridges having ink that can cost more than a bottle of domper and new or if you would buy the same volume, So the ink is quite expensive. And although you do have third party inks that you can buy from various stores, the printer companies always say that they have developed inks that lubricate the system and don't clog things up, and they're designed to work properly. But I've personally noticed that if I've got one of these ink tank eco tank printers from a brother or Cannon, I mean they're fantastic that they're designed for you to have a family with lots of kids printing, or to be used in offices, small officers and businesses. If you're just going to print once or twice a year, you either get yourself a black and white laser printer. But if you need color and it's only very rarely, well, if it's rarely, you can go to an office works or one of the stores that has printers there that you can just bring a us bastic. But the other option, of course, is just to buy a cheap inkjet printer, because if it does clog up, well, you can always have a brand new cartridges to hand, and the printers do have cleaning cycles. But this is where I was HARKing back to the fact that you have these eco tank ink tank type printers that can have a year or two worths of ink insight, depending and how much printing you do, but they're designed to deliver that a year long at least up to two years with EPSOM level of printing on a constant basis, because they have these ink tanks that your body, these little botles of ink about twenty bucks a pop for each color, pull them in and just keep going. You don't have to buy the little ink cartridges that have the heads there. But I have noticed that those if you don't use them, because I'm a bit like you, I only print rarely. If you don't use them for a long time in there ten o clock and then you've got to run twenty or thirty cleaning cycles to get rid of the line. So if you're just an everyday individual user that prints rarely, well you just buy one of these cheap printers. I've seen them for sale as little as twenty bucks sometimes on sale at some of those big cheap department stores because they're getting rid of old models. And if it does play up, yeah, it can be easier just to go get a whole another one, you know, a new one of those plug it in and off you go. But if you do have a more serious amount of printing to be done, and you've got a family with kids where you have a small business that's always printing stuff, then definitely the best way to go is to get one of these eco tank slash ink tank type printers from Cannon and Brother which do a fabulous job epsom as well. You know, they do this fabulous job of delivering lots of ink at a low cost. You do pay more upfront for the printer. You'll be paying two, three, four, five hundred bucks depending on you know, whether it has a printer and a scanner and a multi sheet feeder and double started printing. And you know, there's various models out there, so the high higher volume used. Definitely one of the eco tank style printers. Individual use just one of the cheap ones, and you know, if you feel like buying a spare cartridge. Off you go. And if not, you've always got the ability to go to office work sort of best buy if you're in the US, that sort of place where they have laser printers that you can bring a little USB stick in and pay whatever it costs per paget you're printing done. That's alex Oharavroyd from Take Advice, Start Life, and this space Time, and that's the show for now. 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