Plus lots of space, ancient ruins, a new boat, and this picture of a Mars rover taken by a Mars helicopter on MARS!

#01 LOST AND FOUND

+ A team of MIT engineers basically made their own underwater GPS system by placing locating beacons underneath the arctic ice. Navigating a robot underwater is challenging due to the lack of normal navigational aids like GPS or the sun, and even more so under the ice because the submersible can't just return to the surface when something goes wrong. MIT's solution worked so well that when something did go wrong, they were able to quickly locate the submersible before a storm caused the team to evacuate, and then extract it from under the ice days later.

+ In 2005, two Navy SEALs took note when a nuclear-powered submarine, the USS San Francisco, ran into an underwater mountain that no one even knew existed. A dozen years later the duo launched Terradepth, a fully autonomous submarine capable of mapping the seafloor to a depth of 20,000 feet. "No one had ever put them together with the level of machine learning and autonomy that we required... It was a big surprise, that these two knuckleheads came up with something that some of the smartest engineers in the world didn’t see.”

#02 NEED MORE SPACE

+ The Mars helicopter Ingenuity successfully completed a series of test flights, the most recent of which saw the helicopter fly a distance of 346 feet out and back and collect information about nearby terrain. Things have been going so well that "NASA managers decided to expand the drone's mission to include at least one more month of flight operations" and start collecting data that can be used by the science team. 

+ Perseverance used its MOXIE instrument to generate oxygen from Mars's carbon dioxide atmosphere, a first on the red planet and a useful trick for future astronauts.

+ Blue Origins filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office over NASA's decision to sole-source a lunar lander from SpaceX, claiming changing rules and unfairness in the process.

+ Meanwhile, SpaceX launched their second crew rotation to the space station, using both a used booster and a used capsule.

+ Russia has indicated it will leave the International Space Station in 2025 and launch its own station in 2030.

+ China launched the first segment of its next space station Tianhe, or “harmony of the heavens,” into orbit.

+ Former Senator Ben Nelson was unanimously confirmed as NASA's net administrator.

+ Apollo 11 pilot Michael Collins died of cancer this week.

#03 ARCHAEOLOGY

+ “These thousands of mustatils really show the creation of a monumental landscape, they show that this part of the world is far from the eternal empty desert that people often imagine, but rather somewhere that remarkable human cultural developments have taken place.”  Tucked away in Northern Saudi Arabia, mysterious structures called mustatils hint at the existence of ancient culture thousands of years before the pyramids were built or the first stone of Stonehenge was put in place.

+ Archaeologists in England unearthed the foundations of a one-of-a-kind luxurious Roman villa and/or ceremonial site. (sometimes it's hard to tell). Regardless, "The Scarborough site housed a complex of buildings, including one with a circular central room and several rooms leading off of it, as well as a bathhouse. The structures’ unique layout has never been recorded in Britain before" and the investigators are having trouble finding precedent anywhere else for that matter.

#04 NEW BOAT

+ The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, one of the premier ocean exploration establishments in the world, is building a new flagship research vessel. The new vessel will support remotely operated vehicle operations as well as a science team of 18 individuals. Keel laying for the R/V David Packard is expected in November this year with completion by fall of 2021. 

#05 CONSERVATION

+ In Belize "more than a dozen organizations came together to protect 236,000 acres of land that represent an irreplaceable linchpin in the conservation of the largest remaining tropical forests in the Americas, outside the Amazon" protecting habitat for five species of wild cat, spider monkeys, howler monkeys and hundreds of bird species.

+ Peru has committed to establishing a rainforest reserve for isolated Indigenous peoples.

+ Wolves are starting to reappear in northern California after a couple of enterprising individuals dispersed hundreds of miles from nearby states.

#06 A GOOD BOOK

+ Drew Lanham's memoir The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature is an exploration of the author's very personal connection with the landscape near his hometown in South Carolina. The book is filled with beautifully rendered stories of his coming of age on a small farm and the colorful cast of characters that populate it. It may lack hair-raising adventure stories, but more than makes up for it with a heartfelt description of how the land, even a small plot of it in South Carolina, can come to define someone for the rest of their lives.

I can still hear the quail calling and the foxes barking. I can still taste the sweetness of blackberries picked fresh off the bramble and smell the rain coming on the approaching rumble of a summer-evening storm. All that and the land were mine back then. I was the richest boy in the world, a prince living right there in backwoods Edgefield... It was a place where the real wild things dwelled.

For more about Lanham and his work as a naturalist, author, professor, and avid birder check out this interview with Krista Tippet from the On Being podcast.

That's all for this week! You can respond to this email to tell me about anything you liked or didn't like, tell me about a project you're working on, or suggest a story. You might also forward this email to a friend so they can subscribe too!

- Evan Hilgemann

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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