NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover lands on the Red Planet

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Written by northsouth

Category: Science

Published: 19 February 2021

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FLORIDA, USA - NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover has safely landed on the red planet, marking an “amazing accomplishment”, the space agency has announced.

Its mission is to search for signs of ancient life, and explore and collect samples for future return to Earth from diverse environments on Mars.

Perseverance will spend the coming years scouring for signs of ancient microbial life in a mission that will bring back samples from Mars to Earth and prepare the way for future human visitors.

The successful landing of the rover was met with applause and loud cheers across eight rooms as the teams were split up in order to be Covid secure.

Steve Jurczyk, NASA’s acting administrator, said: “It’s amazing to have Perseverance join Curiosity on Mars and what a credit to the team.

“Just what an amazing team to work through all the adversity and all the challenges that go with landing a rover on Mars, plus the challenges of Covid.

“And just an amazing accomplishment.”

Perseverance’s twitter account also marked its arrival on the red planet, tweeting that it had landed safely, and the posting pictures from the rover – it’s “forever home”.

The research destination of the rover – a scientific laboratory the size of a car – is Jezero crater, a 28-mile-wide depression containing sediments of an ancient river delta.

Scientists know that 3.5 billion years ago, Jezero was the site of a large lake, complete with its own delta.

They believe that while the water may be long gone, somewhere within the crater, or maybe along its 2,000-foot-tall (610 metre) rim, evidence that life once existed there could be waiting.

Any hunt for these signs will include the rover’s cameras, especially Mastcam-Z, which is located on the rover’s mast.

It can zoom in to inspect scientifically interesting targets.

The mission’s science team can task Perseverance’s SuperCam instrument – also on the mast – to fire a laser at a promising target, generating a small plasma cloud that can be analysed to help determine its chemical composition.

If that data is intriguing enough, the team could command the rover’s robotic arm to go in for a closer look.

Perseverance will gather rock and soil samples using its drill, and will store the sample cores in tubes on the Martian surface ready for a return mission to bring around 30 samples to Earth in the early 2030s.

– Professor Sanjeev Gupta, from Imperial College London, will help NASA oversee mission operations from a science and engineering point of view.

– Professor Mark Sephton, also from Imperial, will help to identify samples that could contain evidence of past life.

– Professor Caroline Smith, from the Natural History Museum, will study the mineralogy and geochemistry of the rocks found in Jezero crater.

– Dr Keyron Hickman-Lewis, also from the Natural History Museum, will study the environments reflected by sedimentary rocks exposed in the crater and the potential for the preservation of ancient microbial life.

The researchers are supported by more than £400,000 in funds from the UK Space Agency (UKSA).

Selected samples will be collected by drilling down to several centimetres and then sealed in sample tubes and stored on the rover.

When the rover reaches a suitable location, a cache of tubes will be dropped on the surface of Mars to be collected by the Sample Fetch Rover, being developed by Airbus in Stevenage, which will take them to the NASA Mars Ascent vehicle.

Perseverance also carries the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, which will fly short distances from the rover in the first attempt at powered, controlled flight on another planet.

A successful test of the helicopter could lead to more flying probes to survey the landscape on other planets.

It will also trial technologies to help astronauts make future expeditions to Mars.

These include testing a method for producing oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, identifying other resources such as subsurface water, and improving landing techniques.

They also involve characterising weather and other environmental conditions that could affect future astronauts living and working on Mars.

How doctors pulled off the world’s first double hand and face transplant

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Written by northsouth

Category: Science

Published: 05 February 2021

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NEW YORK - More than 140 experts perform historic 23-hour surgery on US burn victim.

A man in the US is learning to smile, blink and touch again after surgeons in New York completed the world’s first successful face and double hand transplant.

Joe DiMeo, from New Jersey, underwent the surgery in August after suffering third-degree burns over 80% of his body in a car accident in July 2018.

DiMeo’s car exploded after it hit the curb and flipped over when he fell asleep at the wheel while commuting home from work on a night shift. He was saved after a passing stranger, R&B singer Ted Wizard Mills, pulled him halfway out of his car.

He was hospitalised for more than four months in the burns unit of a New Jersey hospital, during which he spent more than two months in a medically induced coma. Though DiMeo survived the ordeal, “he was left without eyelids, ears and much of his fingers” CNN reports, as well as “severe scarring on his face and neck that limited his range of motion [and] even partially covered his eyes”.

The search for a donor was “scuppered by the Covid-19 pandemic”, Sky News says, but the 23-hour surgery was completed after one was identified in Delaware”.

More than 140 healthcare professionals worked on the procedure, during which “doctors amputated both of DiMeo’s hands, replacing them mid-forearm and connecting nerves, blood vessels and 21 tendons with hair-thin stitches”, the broadcaster adds. His new face, including the forehead, eyebrows, ears, nose, eyelids, lips, skull line, cheek, nasal and chin bone were also transplanted.

DiMeo told People Magazine that since his surgery “every week gets better”, adding that he is grateful to the donor and “hopes the family can take some comfort knowing that part of the donor lives on with me”.

He is now able to feed himself, shower, wash his hands and play pool - all things he couldn’t do before his transplant surgery. “He has already started swinging a golf club and hopes to practice with his father when the weather is better,” Sky News adds.

There have previously been around 50 face transplants and about 100 hand transplants performed worldwide, but the surgeries had never successfully been carried out at the same time until now. Two previous attempts have been made at the complex procedure, but one patient died within months of the operation, while the second ultimately had to have the transplanted hands removed days later.

Dr Bohdan Pomahac, a surgeon at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital who led the second effort, said: “The fact they could pull it off is phenomenal. I know first hand it’s incredibly complicated. It’s a tremendous success.”

Chinese vaccine ‘only 50% effective’

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Written by northsouth

Category: Science

Published: 13 January 2021

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BRASILIA - A Covid vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac has been found to be 50.4% effective in Brazilian clinical trials, showing the jab is significantly less effective than previous data suggested.

Indonesia, Turkey and Singapore are among the countries to have placed orders for the vaccine.

It works by using dead viral particles to expose the body's immune system to the virus without risking a serious disease response.