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Explore & Observe has a new email address: newsletter@exploreandobserve.com! I'm hopeful this change, along with other less visible ones, will help solve some spam issues I've been having lately. Regardless, if you're reading this message no action is needed and you should continue receiving the newsletter normally. Have a great day!

- Evan Hilgemann

#01

Every 18 months or so something special happens: Earth and Mars align in such a way to make travel between the two feasible. This period is called a Mars launch window, its only open for a few weeks, and the next one starts now! Three Mars missions are scheduled to launch within the next few weeks. The bad news: miss your opportunity now and you have to wait another 18 months.

The action starts this week with the scheduled launch of the UAE's Mars orbiter Hope on Tuesday, July 14, at 1:51 pm PT. Hope will get a ride on a Japanese H-2A rocket. The spacecraft, the first ever Arab led mission to Mars, is billed as the first true Martian weather satellite and will study the climate of the red planet.

Next up is China's  Tianwen-1 which will launch aboard a Chinese Long March 5 rocket on July 23rd. This ambitious mission includes a lander, rover, and orbiter. Tianwen is China's first attempt at an interplanetary mission and, if successful, would make China only the 3rd nation to ever land on Mars.

Lastly comes NASA entry to the group, Perseverance, scheduled to launch July 30th at around 4am PT aboard an Atlas V rocket. The one ton, sky crane enabled, nuclear powered, laser wielding, rock drilling, and sample caching gorilla of a rover looks quite a bit like its predecessor, Curiosity, but incorporates a bunch of upgrades. Look out for higher resolution cameras, more durable wheels, better navigation algorithms, and a new suite of instruments. Importantly, Percy will drill and cache samples of Martian rocks to be returned to Earth in the next decade by another robot. This is something of a holy grail of Martian exploration with original proposals going back decades. Oh, and if that's not enough, Percy will also drop off a helicopter drone on the surface. 

All three missions will arrive at Mars early 2021. Stay tuned, it'll be an exciting month!

#02

Not to be overlooked by new arrivals, the Curiosity rover has embarked upon a summer road trip on Mars, and the Insight lander's burrowing instrument known as "the Mole" has paused operations after failing to make progress into the soil.

#03

"In 2015, her findings—that the apes in her care could recognize their own shadows, learn to enter into contractual agreements, signal intent, assume duties and responsibilities, distinguish between the concepts of good and bad, and deceive—were used in a historic lawsuit that helped curtail biomedical testing on great apes in the United States. The findings also raised a fascinating, provocative and deeply troubling question: Can an animal develop a human mind? 'It’s a question you don’t ask,' Savage-Rumbaugh said. 'A lot of people, a lot of scientists, don’t want that kind of study done. Because if the answer were yes...' Her eyes sparkled. 'Then, oh my god—who are we?'" A fascinating look into the career of primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, her work studying communication in Bonobos, and what that can teach us about ourselves.

#04

Miles of underwater cave systems exist below Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. Although this would seem to be an unlikely place to find evidence of prehistorical humans, the caves were dry and accessible up until around 8,000 years and show clear signs of human exploration. "Meacham and his CINDAQ dive team had seen 'weird' things in other parts of the Sagitario cave, such as signs of digging and piles of rocks, that they could not explain. Then, in 2017... he encountered something that has changed how archaeologists think about the earliest peoples of the Americas." Learn more about what might be the earliest signs of mining anywhere in the Americas. 

#05

A House of Representatives appropriations bill released on July 7th was not exactly promising for America's return to the moon. The bill would keep NASA's funding mostly flat compared to 2020 numbers, and notably does not include the $3.3 billion requested by NASA and the president to fund the development of a lunar lander. In an ideal world, the senate would put together its own bill, the two chambers would work out a compromise bill, the president would sign it, and everyone would shake hands and go home slightly dissatisfied but pleased that an agreement was reached. "Instead, as SpaceNews predicts, they will likely reach no such compromises on any aspects of the federal budget, and will instead agree only to an omnibus spending bill that keeps 2021 funding at 2020 levels — and keeps NASA's lunar ambitions grounded." 

Regardless of the debates in Washington, the space station continues normal operations. Astronauts completed a second space walk to replace old batteries, and Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are about halfway through their mission after launching inside SpaceX's Dragon capsule back in May. 

#06

In a curious incidence of animal migration, a Beluga whale has been spotted off the coast of southern California. Belugas are concentrated almost entirely in arctic and subarctic areas, and are highly social animals who prefer to travel in pods. Scientists are baffled as to how this lone individual ended up alone 2,500 miles from the nearest known Beluga population.

#07

"After ten weeks of preparation, two weeks of isolation, documentation of negative COVID-19 tests, temperatures taken, and personal protective gear in place, nine science team members from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) will depart on the R/V Neil Armstrong from Woods Hole, MA" on a nearly two week expedition to perform maintenance on the Pioneer Array, a grouping of moorings, nodes, and underwater robot docking stations off the New England Coast. The trip marks the first science expedition to leave Woods Holes since a pandemic induced pause in operations was put on place earlier in the year.

The Bookshelf

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales is not a survival manual per se, but it still has the potential to save your life some day. The book is a combination of personal experience, survival narrative, and scientific research, all with the goal of trying to decipher what defines a good survivor. Deep Survival is more about human psychology than anything else. What is it that causes normal people to get into survival situations in the first place? And what causes some people to die while others survive much worse situations with fewer resources and knowledge? Hint:

"The maddening thing for someone with a Western scientific turn of the mind is that its not what's in your pack that separates the quick from the dead. Its not even what's in your mind. Corny as it sounds, it's what's in your heart."

Deep Survival is about much more than just surviving in the outdoors, it is a lesson in risk management and response that I think is relevant to all of us.

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This newsletter was produced as a private venture and not in the author's capacity as an employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology or of Griffith Observatory. Any views and opinions expressed herein or on exploreandobserve.com are his own and not those of his employers.

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