Here on Earth we are gradually reaching out to the heavenly cosmos. Its still sobering to realize that although the Voyager probes launched more than 40 years ago they are still less than 1 light day away! The heavens really are quite big.
Thankfully Mars is comparatively close and humanity has 3 missions to the planet in 2021. The wonderfully named Tianwen-1 (roughly translated as “Questions To Heaven”) Chinese mission, the United Arab Emirates Hope mission to study Martian weather and NASA’s Perseverance rover (using many parts and design similarities to the incredibly successful Curiosity rover as well as carrying Ingenuity to enable the first powered flight over another planet) that may see soil samples returned to Earth with help from the European Space Agency.
It is notable that Perseverance was the name proposed by Alex Mather in 2020 when he was a 7th grade school pupil to celebrate the people who made it. As we recover from the COVID pandemic Alex’s words relating to humanity remind us to hope and stay curios with a spirit to pursue opportunities to grow as a species. He reminded us that the single most prominent human characteristic is “perseverance, the ability to keep on pushing the limits and to recover in the face of tragedy.”
Alltheus wishes every success to the respective mission sponsors and controllers.
Some podcast links:
{Inside Science 12 February 2021 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000s2rf ) 10:00min in